


State Your Sting

by portoftheartistasayoungc



Category: Pretty Little Liars
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, F/F, Long-Distance Relationship, Original Character(s), Poetry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-13
Updated: 2017-05-17
Packaged: 2018-02-25 05:19:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 53
Words: 171,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2609927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/portoftheartistasayoungc/pseuds/portoftheartistasayoungc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Paige goes to the Midwest to visit her twin brother at college, she has a chance meeting with another student there: Emily Fields. The two are little more than acquaintances at first who run into each other a few times a year, but at some point they'll have to admit to the connection they both feel between them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Bloody Coaster

Paige shivered. She had been in such a rush that morning, so worried that she was going to miss her flight that she had run out of her dorm room at Stanford without grabbing a jacket. Maybe it was fine to run around without a jacket in California, but now she was sitting in Chicago's Union Station, shivering and thinking longingly of the jacket draped on the back of her desk chair.

She had flown into Midway around 11 am and taken a cab from there to Union Station. Her parents were paying for the trip and they were fairly well off. Still, Paige would rather have saved some money and figured out the L. But once she realized how cold she was going to be and admitted to herself how tired she was, she bit the bullet and hailed a cab.

Tuck would make fun of her when (if) she told him. He had always been better at navigation. When they went on road trips together he held the map and she drove. She pumped the gas and he bought the snacks. She picked out the music and he sang. Sometimes, and their mother agreed, it seemed like all the traits of a well adjusted human being had been divided between them in the womb. They had always been the most confident and successful when they were together. There was a quiet reassurance that seemed to pass between the two of them like a slipstream. Paige knew she would always have someone on her side. There were definitely downsides to have a twin (the matching outfits when they were kids, for one) but for the most part Paige liked being a twin and she loved her brother.

She smiled when she realized she would be seeing Tuck in just over four hours. Then she frowned again because she knew Tuck would make fun of her for forgetting her jacket. He wouldn't have forgotten his jacket. And he would have reminded her to grab her's as well. It was times like this that affirmed for Paige that they'd made the right decision when they chose to go to different schools for college. They weren't kids anymore. They needed to learn to live less co-dependently.

Paige mentally shook herself as she caught herself thinking in plural again.

"'I', not 'we,'" she muttered under her breath.

That was another downside of being a twin— figuring out who you were without the other one around. She knew not all twins were like this. She'd met some who were fiercely independent. But that wasn't the case with her and Tuck. They had adored each other from the start and it never stopped. She felt more at ease, more fun and confident when she was with him. Paige was pretty sure that other people even liked her more when she was with Tuck.

She shook herself again, trying to get rid of her insecurities. Her entire first year at Stanford she had avoided telling anyone that she had a twin. Her friends knew about Tuck, of course, but she just said "brother" when she talked about him. Some people had figured it out, seeing photos of she and Tuck together, but by that time "twin" was not the first thing they associated Paige with, which had been her aim.

At Stanford she had successfully become Paige, who just happened to have a twin brother, and not one half of the McCullers twins. Some of the kids in high school had actually called them McTwins or just PT. They were not worth nicknaming individually, apparently.

None of this had ever seemed to bother Tuck. He missed Paige, of course, but he didn't rely on her the way she relied on him. He had always been more sure of himself than Paige and he transitioned into singular living much easier than she had.

Still, they had their "twin things." He always seemed to call just when Paige was picking up her cell phone to call him. They could sort of feel how the other had done on a test without having to tell each other their results out loud. And earlier that month, Tuck had talked their parents into getting Paige the plane tickets to visit him for their 20th birthday, which was what she was planning on asking her parents for.

Paige suspected that part of the reason it had been easier for Tuck to set out on his own was that he was gay.

It was not a memory that Paige was proud of and she frowned as she picked up her bag and made her way out to the train tracks, stopping briefly to show a conductor her ticket and climb up the stairs and into the train to find her seat (still shivering).

Four years ago, Tuck had called a family meeting, which was, in and of itself, weird. They weren't a "family meeting" type of family. Paige felt terrified sitting with her parents on the living room couch while Tuck had paced in front of them all, sweating and cracking his knuckles (both tell-tale nervous Tuck behavior). She was on the wrong side of the equation. She and Tuck always told each other things before they told their parents.

Five minutes later, she had been on the verge of throwing a coaster at him just to get him to say something when their father had finally cleared his throat and said, "What's this all about, son?"

Tuck had stopped mid-pace, still in profile to them all, and without turning, dropped his tensed up shoulders in a defeated sort of gesture, exhaled and said, quite clearly, "I'm gay."

The chaos that had followed this pronouncement was still a bit of a blur to Paige. Their father had started to yell things like, "This isn't how we raised you" and "I will not allow this" and their mother had sat in a stunned silence until she had to jump up from the couch to stop Tuck from leaving, after which, she focused on trying to calm their father down.

Paige, on the other hand, had felt the edges of herself going black with anger. Her eyes were slipping into some sort of tunnel vision and she was very aware of her heart, which felt like it was burning and pumping lava into her limbs instead of blood. Maybe she had done it because she had felt like doing it only a few moments before, but, Paige watched, a bystander to her own anger, as her hand reached out and grabbed one of the white and grey marble coasters her mother had gotten from her sister for Christmas, and threw it directly at Tuck.

Maybe if Tuck had been the one of them to get the athletic genes, he would have had a chance at dodging the thin rock Paige had just sent flying at him. But he hadn't. Which meant that Paige had. Which also meant that Paige was very athletic and good at throwing things. Both of things these facts came together quite literally, as the coaster connected with the side of Tuck's head.

The shouting had stopped immediately. Tuck had grabbed the side of his head and blood had begun to trickle out from between his fingers. Paige had stood up without meaning to when she'd thrown the coaster and now the twins were staring at each other eye to eye across the room. For the first time in either of their lives, they had looked into each other's faces and seen nothing but betrayal staring back at them.

Paige had run out of the house and then out to the tree house she and Tuck had built with their father the summer they were ten. From there she had watched as her parents and Tuck, with a towel pressed against his head, all got in the car and drove away, Paige had assumed, to the hospital.

Sometime later, Paige was never sure how long it had been, she'd gone back into the house, grabbed a sleeping bag, her pillow, and the bloody coaster from where it had been left on the living room floor, and returned to the tree house.

Paige didn't like to remember this, but she forced herself to sometimes. Her mother had called Paige her "little glutton," as in a glutton for punishment, because as a kid, when she had broken a rule or lied to her parents, she would often confess by way of informing her parents that she had grounded herself for a month. Maybe it was the fact that her father was a pastor, but Paige had always had the strongest moral compass of any of her peers. She had an inherent sense of justice, too, and never shied away from doling it out, even to herself, if need be. She had the sort of terrifying qualities that one imagines a martyr must possess in the moments just before death.

Paige was happy to find that she'd gotten a backward facing seat on the Amtrak train that was about to start its southwestern journey down through Illinois. In the midst of that terrible memory, it reminded her of riding in the hatchback of her family's old station wagon. Sitting in the back, facing the wrong way, had always given Tuck car-sickness, but Paige loved it. Much like the coaster incident, Paige experienced her own life like it was a rerun on TV. Things happened to her and then she reviewed the contents sometime later.

It hadn't been until the next day, when Tuck, with ten stitches on the left side of his head, had come out to talk to her that she really understood why she had thrown a coaster at her brother's head.

Tuck had slowly climbed up the ladder that was nailed to the tree trunk until just his head was poking up through the hole in the tree house floor.

"We need to talk, Paige," he'd said.

"No shit," had been Paige's tactful reply. Still, Tuck knew his sister and he knew that when she was like this, it was as good a response as he could hope for. He took this curt response as a pleasant invitation to join her and climbed all the way into the tree house.

He'd sat down across from Paige so that the entrance hole was between them.

"Good thinking," she'd quipped, slowly spinning the coaster in her fingers and not looking up at her brother. "If I lunge at you, I'll probably just fall out."

"You never think, do you?" He'd wasted no time getting to the point. He was madder than Paige had ever seen him.

"Just because I'm impulsive that doesn't mean I don't think," Paige replied defensively. "At least I'm not as selfish as you are. All you ever think about is yourself!"

"What the hell, Paige?! I expected this from Mom and Dad, but not you. I mean, I knew Dad would flip a shit about me being gay, but you? I guess we know who got the bigot genes between us now don't we?"

As he'd said this, he'd moved to crawl back over to the entrance, to leave, but had stopped when he saw Paige's face. She'd gone white as a sheet. Her eyes were wide and rapidly filling with tears.

"What?" she had whispered. "No. I don't care that you're gay."

Tuck had looked at Paige for a long moment, looking at the truth of this statement, feeling it, with the same look on his face, Paige had realized, as when he jumped into the cold water of a swimming pool. And then he had laughed, the most relieved laugh Paige had ever heard; one trumpet-like blast and the walls between them fell. Tuck had rolled onto his back beside the hole and tears had begun to slide down the sides of his face.

"Then what?" he had asked.

"How could you not tell me?" Paige choked out, anger evident in every word. "I felt like a chump sitting there with Mom and Dad. How could you keep something like this from me?"

Paige was crying by that time, too. He'd moved next to her then, sat right beside her. That alone had been enough for Paige to know that, despite how angry they both were at each other, they would be alright again, eventually. Then he'd turned his head and looked at her.

"I'm sorry," he'd said, his voice sinking like a wet grave on the second word. "But this isn't something we can share."

Paige had felt like she had when her Mom had told them their beagle, Duke, had died at the vet's when they were on vacation and she'd been unable to remember if she had said goodbye to him before they'd left.

"Shit. We have to go talk to Mom and Dad," Tuck had interrupted the desperate search that was going on in her mind. "Dad is about to call the police to have you arrested for a hate crime and Mom seems to think you've exiled yourself for good this time. I forgive you, by the way." Tuck had always been the bigger person.

"I am sorry," Paige had said solemnly, "but really, a hate crime? Nice to know you all think so highly of me." Paige had been dreading the conversation she would have to have with her parents. She was going to have to ground herself for a long time for this one.

"It looked pretty bad. Mom made up a story in the ER about it being some sort of Frisbee accident."

They'd both laughed at this, but it was a dry, hollow laugh.

"I am going to have to call you Paige Hate Crime McCullers from now on, though."

"That's really not funny," Paige had said seriously.

"It's not supposed to be," Tuck had replied.

The scenery quickly turned from city to the slow roll of the Midwest prairie, the train moved toward Solomon, as Paige remembered all of this. Tuck had been true to his word, sort of. He did call her H.C. sometimes, but never jokingly. It was only when that blinding rage was threatening to take hold of her, Paige shivered. She had been in such a rush that morning, so worried that she was going to miss her flight that she had run out of her dorm room at Stanford without grabbing a jacket. Maybe it was fine to run around without a jacket in California, but now she was sitting in Chicago's Union Station, shivering and thinking longingly of the jacket draped on the back of her desk chair.

She had flown into Midway around 11 am and taken a cab from there to Union Station. Her parents were paying for the trip and they were fairly well off. Still, Paige would rather have saved some money and figured out the L. But once she realized how cold she was going to be and admitted to herself how tired she was, she bit the bullet and hailed a cab.

Tuck would make fun of her when (if) she told him. He had always been better at navigation. When they went on road trips together he held the map and she drove. She pumped the gas and he bought the snacks. She picked out the music and he sang. Sometimes, and their mother agreed, it seemed like all the traits of a well adjusted human being had been divided between them in the womb. They had always been the most confident and successful when they were together. There was a quiet reassurance that seemed to pass between the two of them like a slipstream. Paige knew she would always have someone on her side. There were definitely downsides to have a twin (the matching outfits when they were kids, for one) but for the most part Paige liked being a twin and she loved her brother.

She smiled when she realized she would be seeing Tuck in just over four hours. Then she frowned again because she knew Tuck would make fun of her for forgetting her jacket. He wouldn't have forgotten his jacket. And he would have reminded her to grab her's as well. It was times like this that affirmed for Paige that they'd made the right decision when they chose to go to different schools for college. They weren't kids anymore. They needed to learn to live less co-dependently.

Paige mentally shook herself as she caught herself thinking in plural again.

"'I', not 'we,'" she muttered under her breath.

That was another downside of being a twin— figuring out who you were without the other one around. She knew not all twins were like this. She'd met some who were fiercely independent. But that wasn't the case with her and Tuck. They had adored each other from the start and it never stopped. She felt more at ease, more fun and confident when she was with him. Paige was pretty sure that other people even liked her more when she was with Tuck.

She shook herself again, trying to get rid of her insecurities. Her entire first year at Stanford she had avoided telling anyone that she had a twin. Her friends knew about Tuck, of course, but she just said "brother" when she talked about him. Some people had figured it out, seeing photos of she and Tuck together, but by that time "twin" was not the first thing they associated Paige with, which had been her aim.

At Stanford she had successfully become Paige, who just happened to have a twin brother, and not one half of the McCullers twins. Some of the kids in high school had actually called them McTwins or just PT. They were not worth nicknaming individually, apparently.

None of this had ever seemed to bother Tuck. He missed Paige, of course, but he didn't rely on her the way she relied on him. He had always been more sure of himself than Paige and he transitioned into singular living much easier than she had.

Still, they had their "twin things." He always seemed to call just when Paige was picking up her cell phone to call him. They could sort of feel how the other had done on a test without having to tell each other their results out loud. And earlier that month, Tuck had talked their parents into getting Paige the plane tickets to visit him for the 20th birthday, which was what she was planning on asking her parents for.

Paige suspected that part of the reason it had been easier for Tuck to set out on his own was that he was gay.

It was not a memory that Paige was proud of and she frowned as she picked up her bag and made her way out to the train tracks, stopping briefly to show a conductor her ticket and climb up the stairs and into the train to find her seat (still shivering).

Four years ago, Tuck had called a family meeting, which was, in and of itself, weird. They weren't a "family meeting" type of family. Paige felt terrified sitting with her parents on the living room couch while Tuck had paced in front of them all, sweating and cracking his knuckles (both tell-tale nervous Tuck behavior). She was on the wrong side of the equation. She and Tuck always told each other things before they told their parents.

Five minutes later, she had been on the verge of throwing a coaster at him just to get him to say something when their father had finally cleared his throat and said, "What's this all about, son?"

Tuck had stopped mid-pace, still in profile to them all, and with out turning, dropped his tensed up shoulders in a defeated sort of gesture, exhaled and said, quite clearly, "I'm gay."

The chaos that had followed this pronouncement was still a bit of a blur to Paige. Their father had started to yell things like, "This isn't how we raised you" and "I will not allow this" and their mother had sat in a stunned silence until she had to jump up from the couch to stop Tuck from leaving, after which, she focused on trying to calm their father down.

Paige, on the other hand, had felt the edges of herself going black with anger. Her eyes were slipping into some sort of tunnel vision and she was very aware of her heart, which felt like it was burning and pumping lava into her limbs instead of blood. Maybe she had done it because she had felt like doing it only a few moments before, but, Paige watched, a bystander to her own anger, as her hand reached out and grabbed one of the white and grey marble coasters her mother had gotten from her sister for Christmas, and threw it directly at Tuck.

Maybe if Tuck had been the one of them to get the athletic genes, he would have had a chance at dodging the thin rock Paige had just sent flying at him. But he hadn't. Which meant that Paige had. Which also meant that Paige was very athletic and good at throwing things. Both of things these facts came together quite literally, as the coaster connected with the side of Tuck's head.

The shouting had stopped immediately. Tuck had grabbed the side of his head and blood had begun to trickle out from between his fingers. Paige had stood up without meaning to when she'd thrown the coaster and now the twins were staring at each other eye to eye across the room. For the first time in either of their lives, they had looked into each other's faces and seen nothing but betrayal staring back at them.

Paige had run out of the house and then out to the tree house she and Tuck had built with their father the summer they were ten. From there she had watched as her parents and Tuck, with a towel pressed against his head, all got in the car and drove away, Paige had assumed, to the hospital.

Sometime later, Paige was never sure how long it had been, she'd gone back into the house, grabbed a sleeping bag, her pillow, and the bloody coaster from where it had been left on the living room floor, and returned to the tree house.

Paige didn't like to remember this, but she forced herself to sometimes. Her mother had called Paige her "little glutton," as in a glutton for punishment, because as a kid, when she had broken a rule or lied to her parents, she would often confess by way of informing her parents that she had grounded herself for a month. Maybe it was the fact that her father was a pastor, but Paige had always had the strongest moral compass of any of her peers. She had an inherent sense of justice, too, and never shied away from doling it out, even to herself, if need be. She had the sort of terrifying qualities that one imagines a martyr must possess in the moments just before death.

Paige was happy to find that she'd gotten a backward facing seat on the Amtrak train that was about to start its southwestern journey down through Illinois. In the midst of that terrible memory, it reminded her of riding in the hatchback of her family's old station wagon. Sitting in the back, facing the wrong way, had always given Tuck carsickness, but Paige loved it. Much like the coaster incident, Paige experienced her own life like it was a rerun on TV. Things happened to her and then she reviewed the contents sometime later.

It hadn't been until the next day, when Tuck, with ten stitches on the left side of his head, had come out to talk to her that she really understood why she had thrown a coaster at her brother's head.

Tuck had slowly climbed up the ladder that was nailed to the tree trunk until just his head was poking up through the hole in the tree house floor.

"We need to talk, Paige," he'd said.

"No shit," had been Paige's tactful reply. Still, Tuck knew his sister and he knew that when she was like this, it was as good a response as he could hope for. He took this curt response as a pleasant invitation to join her and climbed all the way into the tree house.

He'd sat down across from Paige so that the entrance hole was between them.

"Good thinking," she'd quipped, slowly spinning the coaster in her fingers and not looking up at her brother. "If I lunge at you, I'll probably just fall out."

"You never think, do you?" He'd wasted no time getting to the point. He was madder than Paige had ever seen him.

"Just because I'm impulsive that doesn't mean I don't think," Paige replied defensively. "At least I'm not as selfish as you are. All you ever think about is yourself!"

"What the hell, Paige?! I expected this from Mom and Dad, but not you. I mean, I knew Dad would flip a shit about me being gay, but you? I guess we know who got the bigot genes between us now don't we?"

As he'd said this, he'd moved to crawl back over to the entrance, to leave, but had stopped when he saw Paige's face. She'd gone white as a sheet. Her eyes were wide and rapidly filling with tears.

"What?" she had whispered. "No. I don't care that you're gay."

Tuck had looked at Paige for a long moment, looking at the truth of this statement, feeling it, with the same look on his face, Paige had realized, as when he jumped into the cold water of a swimming pool. And then he had laughed, the most relieved laugh Paige had ever heard; one trumpet-like blast and the walls between them fell. Tuck had rolled onto his back beside the hole and tears had begun to slide down the sides of his face.

"Then what?" he had asked.

"How could you not tell me?" Paige choked out, anger in evident in every word. "I felt like a chump sitting there with Mom and Dad. How could you keep something like this from me?"

Paige was crying by that time, too. He'd moved next to her then, sat right beside her. That alone had been enough for Paige to know that, despite how angry they both were at each other, they would be alright again, eventually. Then he'd turned his head and looked at her.

"I'm sorry," he'd said, his voice sinking like a wet grave on the second word. "But this isn't something we can share."

Paige had felt like she had when her Mom had told them their beagle, Duke, had died at the vet's when they were on vacation and she'd been unable to remember if she had said goodbye to him before they'd left.

"Shit. We have to go talk to Mom and Dad," Tuck had interrupted the desperate search that was going on in her mind. "Dad is about to call the police to have you arrested for a hate crime and Mom seems to think you've exiled yourself for good this time. I forgive you, by the way." Tuck had always been the bigger person.

"I am sorry," Paige had said solemnly, "but really, a hate crime? Nice to know you all think so highly of me." Paige had been dreading the conversation she would have to have with her parents. She was going to have to ground herself for a long time for this one.

"It looked pretty bad. Mom made up a story in the ER about it being some sort of Frisbee accident."

They'd both laughed at this, but it was a dry, hollow laugh.

"I am going to have to call you Paige Hate Crime McCullers from now on, though."

"That's really not funny," Paige had said seriously.

"It's not supposed to be," Tuck had replied.

Then scenery quickly turned from city to the slow roll of the Midwest prairie, the train moved toward Solomon, as Paige remembered all of this. Tuck had been true to his word, sort of. He did call her H.C. sometimes, but never jokingly. It was only when that blinding rage was threatening to take hold of her, Paige shivered. She had been in such a rush that morning, so worried that she was going to miss her flight that she had run out of her dorm room at Stanford without grabbing a jacket. Maybe it was fine to run around without a jacket in California, but now she was sitting in Chicago's Union Station, shivering and thinking longingly of the jacket draped on the back of her desk chair.

She had flown into Midway around 11 am and taken a cab from there to Union Station. Her parents were paying for the trip and they were fairly well off. Still, Paige would rather have saved some money and figured out the L. But once she realized how cold she was going to be and admitted to herself how tired she was, she bit the bullet and hailed a cab.

Tuck would make fun of her when (if) she told him. He had always been better at navigation. When they went on road trips together he held the map and she drove. She pumped the gas and he bought the snacks. She picked out the music and he sang. Sometimes, and their mother agreed, it seemed like all the traits of a well adjusted human being had been divided between them in the womb. They had always been the most confident and successful when they were together. There was a quiet reassurance that seemed to pass between the two of them like a slipstream. Paige knew she would always have someone on her side. There were definitely downsides to have a twin (the matching outfits when they were kids, for one) but for the most part Paige liked being a twin and she loved her brother.

She smiled when she realized she would be seeing Tuck in just over four hours. Then she frowned again because she knew Tuck would make fun of her for forgetting her jacket. He wouldn't have forgotten his jacket. And he would have reminded her to grab her's as well. It was times like this that affirmed for Paige that they'd made the right decision when they chose to go to different schools for college. They weren't kids anymore. They needed to learn to live less co-dependently.

Paige mentally shook herself as she caught herself thinking in plural again.

"'I', not 'we,'" she muttered under her breath.

That was another downside of being a twin— figuring out who you were without the other one around. She knew not all twins were like this. She'd met some who were fiercely independent. But that wasn't the case with her and Tuck. They had adored each other from the start and it never stopped. She felt more at ease, more fun and confident when she was with him. Paige was pretty sure that other people even liked her more when she was with Tuck.

She shook herself again, trying to get rid of her insecurities. Her entire first year at Stanford she had avoided telling anyone that she had a twin. Her friends knew about Tuck, of course, but she just said "brother" when she talked about him. Some people had figured it out, seeing photos of she and Tuck together, but by that time "twin" was not the first thing they associated Paige with, which had been her aim.

At Stanford she had successfully become Paige, who just happened to have a twin brother, and not one half of the McCullers twins. Some of the kids in high school had actually called them McTwins or just PT. They were not worth nicknaming individually, apparently.

None of this had ever seemed to bother Tuck. He missed Paige, of course, but he didn't rely on her the way she relied on him. He had always been more sure of himself than Paige and he transitioned into singular living much easier than she had.

Still, they had their "twin things." He always seemed to call just when Paige was picking up her cell phone to call him. They could sort of feel how the other had done on a test without having to tell each other their results out loud. And earlier that month, Tuck had talked their parents into getting Paige the plane tickets to visit him for the 20th birthday, which was what she was planning on asking her parents for.

Paige suspected that part of the reason it had been easier for Tuck to set out on his own was that he was gay.

It was not a memory that Paige was proud of and she frowned as she picked up her bag and made her way out to the train tracks, stopping briefly to show a conductor her ticket and climb up the stairs and into the train to find her seat (still shivering).

Four years ago, Tuck had called a family meeting, which was, in and of itself, weird. They weren't a "family meeting" type of family. Paige felt terrified sitting with her parents on the living room couch while Tuck had paced in front of them all, sweating and cracking his knuckles (both tell-tale nervous Tuck behavior). She was on the wrong side of the equation. She and Tuck always told each other things before they told their parents.

Five minutes later, she had been on the verge of throwing a coaster at him just to get him to say something when their father had finally cleared his throat and said, "What's this all about, son?"

Tuck had stopped mid-pace, still in profile to them all, and with out turning, dropped his tensed up shoulders in a defeated sort of gesture, exhaled and said, quite clearly, "I'm gay."

The chaos that had followed this pronouncement was still a bit of a blur to Paige. Their father had started to yell things like, "This isn't how we raised you" and "I will not allow this" and their mother had sat in a stunned silence until she had to jump up from the couch to stop Tuck from leaving, after which, she focused on trying to calm their father down.

Paige, on the other hand, had felt the edges of herself going black with anger. Her eyes were slipping into some sort of tunnel vision and she was very aware of her heart, which felt like it was burning and pumping lava into her limbs instead of blood. Maybe she had done it because she had felt like doing it only a few moments before, but, Paige watched, a bystander to her own anger, as her hand reached out and grabbed one of the white and grey marble coasters her mother had gotten from her sister for Christmas, and threw it directly at Tuck.

Maybe if Tuck had been the one of them to get the athletic genes, he would have had a chance at dodging the thin rock Paige had just sent flying at him. But he hadn't. Which meant that Paige had. Which also meant that Paige was very athletic and good at throwing things. Both of things these facts came together quite literally, as the coaster connected with the side of Tuck's head.

The shouting had stopped immediately. Tuck had grabbed the side of his head and blood had begun to trickle out from between his fingers. Paige had stood up without meaning to when she'd thrown the coaster and now the twins were staring at each other eye to eye across the room. For the first time in either of their lives, they had looked into each other's faces and seen nothing but betrayal staring back at them.

Paige had run out of the house and then out to the tree house she and Tuck had built with their father the summer they were ten. From there she had watched as her parents and Tuck, with a towel pressed against his head, all got in the car and drove away, Paige had assumed, to the hospital.

Sometime later, Paige was never sure how long it had been, she'd gone back into the house, grabbed a sleeping bag, her pillow, and the bloody coaster from where it had been left on the living room floor, and returned to the tree house.

Paige didn't like to remember this, but she forced herself to sometimes. Her mother had called Paige her "little glutton," as in a glutton for punishment, because as a kid, when she had broken a rule or lied to her parents, she would often confess by way of informing her parents that she had grounded herself for a month. Maybe it was the fact that her father was a pastor, but Paige had always had the strongest moral compass of any of her peers. She had an inherent sense of justice, too, and never shied away from doling it out, even to herself, if need be. She had the sort of terrifying qualities that one imagines a martyr must possess in the moments just before death.

Paige was happy to find that she'd gotten a backward facing seat on the Amtrak train that was about to start its southwestern journey down through Illinois. In the midst of that terrible memory, it reminded her of riding in the hatchback of her family's old station wagon. Sitting in the back, facing the wrong way, had always given Tuck carsickness, but Paige loved it. Much like the coaster incident, Paige experienced her own life like it was a rerun on TV. Things happened to her and then she reviewed the contents sometime later.

It hadn't been until the next day, when Tuck, with ten stitches on the left side of his head, had come out to talk to her that she really understood why she had thrown a coaster at her brother's head.

Tuck had slowly climbed up the ladder that was nailed to the tree trunk until just his head was poking up through the hole in the tree house floor.

"We need to talk, Paige," he'd said.

"No shit," had been Paige's tactful reply. Still, Tuck knew his sister and he knew that when she was like this, it was as good a response as he could hope for. He took this curt response as a pleasant invitation to join her and climbed all the way into the tree house.

He'd sat down across from Paige so that the entrance hole was between them.

"Good thinking," she'd quipped, slowly spinning the coaster in her fingers and not looking up at her brother. "If I lunge at you, I'll probably just fall out."

"You never think, do you?" He'd wasted no time getting to the point. He was madder than Paige had ever seen him.

"Just because I'm impulsive that doesn't mean I don't think," Paige replied defensively. "At least I'm not as selfish as you are. All you ever think about is yourself!"

"What the hell, Paige?! I expected this from Mom and Dad, but not you. I mean, I knew Dad would flip a shit about me being gay, but you? I guess we know who got the bigot genes between us now don't we?"

As he'd said this, he'd moved to crawl back over to the entrance, to leave, but had stopped when he saw Paige's face. She'd gone white as a sheet. Her eyes were wide and rapidly filling with tears.

"What?" she had whispered. "No. I don't care that you're gay."

Tuck had looked at Paige for a long moment, looking at the truth of this statement, feeling it, with the same look on his face, Paige had realized, as when he jumped into the cold water of a swimming pool. And then he had laughed, the most relieved laugh Paige had ever heard; one trumpet-like blast and the walls between them fell. Tuck had rolled onto his back beside the hole and tears had begun to slide down the sides of his face.

"Then what?" he had asked.

"How could you not tell me?" Paige choked out, anger in evident in every word. "I felt like a chump sitting there with Mom and Dad. How could you keep something like this from me?"

Paige was crying by that time, too. He'd moved next to her then, sat right beside her. That alone had been enough for Paige to know that, despite how angry they both were at each other, they would be alright again, eventually. Then he'd turned his head and looked at her.

"I'm sorry," he'd said, his voice sinking like a wet grave on the second word. "But this isn't something we can share."

Paige had felt like she had when her Mom had told them their beagle, Duke, had died at the vet's when they were on vacation and she'd been unable to remember if she had said goodbye to him before they'd left.

"Shit. We have to go talk to Mom and Dad," Tuck had interrupted the desperate search that was going on in her mind. "Dad is about to call the police to have you arrested for a hate crime and Mom seems to think you've exiled yourself for good this time. I forgive you, by the way." Tuck had always been the bigger person.

"I am sorry," Paige had said solemnly, "but really, a hate crime? Nice to know you all think so highly of me." Paige had been dreading the conversation she would have to have with her parents. She was going to have to ground herself for a long time for this one.

"It looked pretty bad. Mom made up a story in the ER about it being some sort of Frisbee accident."

They'd both laughed at this, but it was a dry, hollow laugh.

"I am going to have to call you Paige Hate Crime McCullers from now on, though."

"That's really not funny," Paige had said seriously.

"It's not supposed to be," Tuck had replied.

Then scenery quickly turned from city to the slow roll of the Midwest prairie, the train moved toward Solomon, as Paige remembered all of this. Tuck had been true to his word, sort of. He did call her H.C. sometimes, but never jokingly. It was only when that blinding rage was threatening to take hold of her, when her body was about to betray her, that Tuck called her this.

The day after they'd had that conversation in the tree house, Paige had joined the swim team. She wanted to prove to Tuck and herself that she could live her own life, too, and do something that he couldn't be a part of. But Paige kept the coaster. She put it into the box under her bed with the other holy relics of her life and she'd sworn that she would never let herself be that monster again.


	2. The Log

Emily groaned. She reached over to the plastic storage container she was currently using as a nightstand and turned off her alarm without opening her eyes.  _I hate math,_ she thought.  _I hate math,_ she thought again. When she finally did open her eyes, the view was exactly the same: pitch black. This always scared her a little. Not because she was afraid of the dark but because it reminded her of  _The Pit and the Pendulum. I hate math,_ she thought again.

She stood up and clicked on her lamp, which was so blindingly bright in her basement bedroom that she threw her arm up to cover her eyes and accidently knocked herself back onto the bed. It was quite a fall. Her mattress was on the floor.

Once she made it back up again, she quickly began to grab clothes from around the room, smelling each one until she found a clean shirt and a passable pair of jeans. She grabbed her messenger bag and headed out for her math class. She would just have to get breakfast after class was over.

The utter darkness of her basement bedroom was just about the only thing she didn't like about it. Emily had lived in the dorms her freshman year at Vallance, and while she had gotten along fine with her roommate, Stephanie, a math wiz, soccer player from Kansas, she hadn't really liked the dorm style living. The mass shared bathroom, the cookie cutter rooms, the constant weekend sexile she'd had to endure whenever Stephanie hooked up with some guy she'd met and wanted some privacy with him in their room. And the whole thing was overpriced, honestly.

Emily had become very close to three girls at Vallance when she'd started working in the theatre scene shop building sets. She made many friends, of course, but the four of them had formed a sort of unit that felt more and more like family with each passing day. Eden, Charlotte, and Jo had become almost as close to her as her three best friends from high school—Spencer, Aria, and Hanna. Emily had a feeling that by the time she graduated from Vallance, these six girls would be the friendships she would carry with her wherever she went.

So, as their freshman year had been drawing to a close, she and her three college friends had decided to see if they could find a house near campus to rent together. They had located one almost immediately; an overlooked, smallish house about 2 blocks away from campus.

It was easy to see  _why_  it had been overlooked. The entire outside of the house was covered in an ugly wooden clapboard siding. It had the appearance of an overgrown wooden children's toy block, with its straight front, back and sides. There was no porch, but it did have a sittable overhang of roof that was reachable from two of the upstairs windows.

The inside was better. Downstairs it had a big living room, small dining room, and a gross but salvagable kitchen. It even had a full bathroom with a shower. Upstairs, three bedrooms and a bathroom had been squeezed in at the top of a thin, narrow-stepped staircase (which each girl had managed to fall down by the end of September).

The landlord was a sweet, older Hispanic man named Horace who had rented the house to them for $500 a month and gave Emily permission to fix up the dark, musty basement into a fourth bedroom. Emily and Eden had decided to stay in Solomon over the summer to do the fix-up necessary on the house before the next school year began.

It had been a joyous summer. That was the only word Emily could use to describe it. Idyllic and swelteringly hot and loose as the days slipped by. She and Eden had secured positions at Vallance's fitness center. It didn't pay much, but they got by and usually had enough at the end of the day to buy a few bottles of Arbor Mist from the gas station convenience store down the street. The cashier there was famous around campus for "forgetting" to card students. After the sun set, they would climb out on to the roof and drink right from the bottle while the heat slowly seeped out of the shingles underneath them.

Spencer and Aria had come and stayed for almost the entirety of June. The three of them had discovered the best Mexican restaurant downtown. They'd spent long afternoons wandering in the local boutiques and picking the perfect colors to paint various rooms of the house. Sometimes they would stay up all night to paint because it was so much cooler working at night. The house felt like a different animal then, with every window thrown open and the moths lazily circling the floodlights they had borrowed from the scene shop. It was in those hours that Emily truly fell in love with the house. As shabby as it was, it was also beautiful, especially when she had her best friends next to her, singing stupid Taylor Swift songs at the top of their lungs. Emily had a framed picture of Spencer and Aria that she'd taken after one such all-nighter. The two of them were fast asleep in the middle of the kitchen floor, flecked and smudged everywhere with red paint and wearing matching blue jean overalls they'd bought at a thrift store just for the occasion, Aria's head resting on Spencer's legs. A few tears had leaked from Emily's eyes the day Spence and Aria had left, driving back to Rosewood in Spencer's silver SUV.

But then Hanna and her boyfriend, Caleb had surprised her, showing up just over a week later the day before Independence Day with enough booze and fireworks for a small army. They had done the holiday as only Hanna could. She'd decorated the entire house within two hours of her arrival and made up a batch of her famous sangria, to boot.

The next day had passed in a literal haze of smoke as the three of them and Eden spent the entire day grilling hamburgers, drinking, and shooting off firecrackers on the driveway. Caleb had taken a nap to sober up and then driven everyone to one of the dirt roads outside of town as the sun was setting. It had taken almost half an hour but they finally located the area where many of the small town's citizens had gathered to watch the fireworks display. They parked along the side of the road and stood at the edge of the field with everyone else just talking and watching the fireflies blinking around them until the show had started. And for a town whose population was only about 30,00, it wasn't half bad. Emily was enjoying this small town Midwestern life more than she ever thought she would. And when they'd returned to the house to end the night, a spectacularly drunk Hanna had insisted on choreographing a "sparkler dance" and ended up burning her arm during the performance.

Hanna and Caleb had stayed for two weeks. Jo and Charlie had mailed some money to Emily and Eden for furniture buying, so the four of them had made it their mission to complete the living room and dining room while they had Caleb and Hanna around to help with the heavy lifting.

Eden, the only actress of Emily's three housemates, and Hanna got along well and they spearheaded the interior decorating mission with a vengeance. They'd tried the thrift stores around town first, but their furniture stock was rather low. At the local Big Lots they'd found a soft, brown, faux-leather sectional that Hanna exclaimed would look amazing with the golden yellow Aria had found to paint the living room. It was on clearance and the last one in stock, but the catch was they had to take it by the end of the day and there was no delivery available. After a quick meeting to decide what to do, Caleb and Emily headed out to rent a U-haul for the afternoon and Eden and Hanna had gone to work picking out the rest of the furniture.

$600 and five hours later, the four of them were collapsed, sweaty and gross, on the new sectional in the living room, arguing over who should cook dinner. Emily lost and made due with what she could find in the pantry. The friends had feasted on banana pancakes, pizza rolls, and stale Doritos that night. Emily suspected that she would remember the meal for her entire life as one of the most satisfying she had ever eaten. They had stuffed their faces by candlelight around the new dining room table.

By the time Caleb and Hanna had set off for Rosewood again, the house was starting to feel like a real home and Hanna had even christened it with a name. Because all the girls living in the house were involved in theatre and because of that awful wooden siding all over the outside she had dubbed it The Monologue Cabin. Once classes had started back up in the fall and all the students had returned, the name had worked its way around campus. Most people just called it The Log for short, though.

* * *

 

Emily hated math for a reason. She was dreadful at it, but she needed to get her math credit out of the way if she wanted to graduate. She had enrolled in the lowest level course Vallance offered in the subject, Mathematical Ideas (lovingly dubbed Math for Rocks by the students) and prepared for the worst.

This particular morning, like most, Emily was struggling to stay awake and distractedly jotting down poems in her notebook instead of taking notes on—

she lifted her head and listened to the professor for a moment—

estimation. The professor, in Emily's opinion, looked like a female Hobbit, and while she didn't dislike the teacher, she felt no warmth toward her either. Her lack of positive feelings on the class was due more to the fact that it was at 8 am every Monday, Wednesday and Friday rather than the professor herself.

But Emily was in a bit of a mood today.  _I estimate,_ she wrote in the margin of her paper,  _one large rock thrown at the professor's head would kill her._ And put me out of my misery, Emily thought.

When class ended Emily threw her books in her bag and took off for the cafeteria. She and the girls split meals pretty evenly between cooking them at home and eating the school food. On her way to the caf she stopped in the mailroom, which was in the same building, since she hadn't checked her box in a few days. As soon as she finished dialing in her combo and opened the box however, she regretted it.

One thin, white envelope stamped with the school seal and "Vallance College Business Office" had been all she needed to know what it was: her third, and final, the letter informed her, notice requesting she pay her remaining tuition for the year. If they did not receive the money by the end of the month, she would not be allowed to continue with her classes. Suddenly Emily didn't feel so hungry. She stuffed the letter in her bag and walked back to The Log slowly.

Emily's father was in the army and her mother worked as well, but they were by no means rich. Her parents had told her that if she chose to go to Vallance that they would only be able to cover half of the $37,000 a year tuition. She would have to get grants, scholarships, and loans to cover the rest. Emily had considered going somewhere cheaper, but she had her heart set on the little liberal arts college with the amazing English department. Her first year had gone by well. She filed her FAFSA and qualified for enough grants and federal loans to cover her half of the tuition. But this year, Vallance had raised the tuition by $5,000 and Emily was scrambling to find a way to pay this extra amount. She had finally decided to apply for a private loan, but the process was long. Emily had no credit history so she'd had to ask her grandparents to co-sign for her. She was still waiting on the final YES or NO from Sallie Mae.

When Emily got home she still felt a little green around the gills from worry, but she knew she should eat, so she headed back towards the kitchen. She walked in and saw Jo leaning against the counter, eating an apple.

"Are you okay," she asked, noticing Emily's face. Jo was a little shorter than Emily with short, strawberry-blonde hair that was shaved on one side of her head. She had an openness about her that Emily found refreshing and eyes that seemed to change color depending on the color of her shirt and the mood she was in. She was the first close lesbian friend that Emily had ever had. All the lesbians Emily met in high school had been so few and far between she had immediately seen them as a possible dating option. But at Vallance, the dating pool was so much larger that she didn't have that issue anymore. It was so nice having someone she could relate to in that way without the pressure of someday the two of them becoming an item.

"Oh sure," Emily had replied sarcastically. "Vallance is just trying to kick me out still," she said grabbing a rather forlorn looking granola bar from her near empty shelf in the cabinet they used as a pantry.

"You still haven't heard back about your loan?" Jo asked with worry in her voice as well.

"Nope. If I don't pay by the end of the month, I can't keep going to my classes." Emily had just finished answering when Eden bustled into the kitchen.

"Good morning, ladies!" She exclaimed loudly as she opened the refrigerator and grabbed a bottle of Naked juice. Then she spotted Emily's face. "What's wrong?!" she shouted at Emily. This was Eden's normal volume, most likely a result of years of being told to project by directors of the plays she'd acted in.

"Emily's sad," Jo replied. She figured Emily didn't want to talk about it, especially when Eden was in such a sunny mood.

"Do you want me to sing for you?" Eden liked to lift crestfallen spirits with rousing songs like  _Battle Hymn of the Republic_.

"No, Eden, thanks," Emily replied quickly. She couldn't help but smile a little, too.

"You're coming tonight though, right? To the show? It's my debut as a dancer!"

"Of course. I'll be there," Emily assured her friend. "I wouldn't miss it."

The mainstage this weekend was the semi-annual dance show that the Vallance Dance Department put on, aptly named MOVEMENT! Eden had gotten involved in the theatre department as a freshman, but this would be her first foray into the world of dance and Emily was excited to see the results.

"Okay, good! See you tonight then," Eden said, pecking both her friends on the cheek, after which she headed for the door. They could just hear her starting to sing the opening notes of  _Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart_  as she closed the door behind her.

"Hurricane Eden," Jo said chuckling as she finished her apple. "Hey, you wanna watch last night's Grey's episode with me this afternoon?"

"Sure. I finish work at 4, but the dance show's not til 7 so we should have time," Emily answered.

"Cool. I'll see if Charlie wants to join us. We'll have to head over before you, though," Jo said about their other housemate, Charlotte, whom everyone called Charlie.

"Why?"

"I'm working the box office tonight and Charlie's running crew," Jo clarified.

"Oh, okay." Emily loved building sets in the scene shop for the theatre, but that's as involved in the department as she got, unlike the other three girls.

"Don't you have Econ in like 20 minutes?" Emily asked glancing at the clock on the kitchen wall. "Where's Charlie?" She and Jo had the class together, thankfully, otherwise, Emily suspected, Charlie would never make it out of bed in time. Charlie was the true night owl of the house. Emily sometimes heard her fixing food at 2 or 3 am because the basement door was located only a few feet away from the stove.

"I'm going to make a wild guess and say: bed. I gotta go get that girl UP," Jo said leaving the kitchen. She stopped at the doorway to the dining room, though and said, "I'm sure you'll hear about the loan soon. It'll be alright Em."

"Thank you, Josephine," Emily smiled at her friend's grimace when she used her whole name. "I'll see you around 4. Bring chocolate!" Emily threw over her shoulder as she headed down into the basement.


	3. Before the Lights Go Down

Paige jerked awake when the conductor leaned over her to fold her ticket upward in the slot he had stuck it in above her seat when she had boarded.

"We'll be in Solomon in about 15 minutes," he announced loudly. It seemed like most of the people in the seats surrounding Paige had the same destination. She looked out the window. They seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. Fields of crops were passing slowly by in the window, punctuated only by a road every now and then and a lonely farmhouse.

She still couldn't understand why Tuck had chosen to go to Vallance College when their parents had told both of them that they would pay for whatever college or university that they chose. But they had to choose. Not going, according to their father, was not an option for his children. This conversation had happened before Paige had received the full ride swimming scholarship to Stanford. Because of this, her parents had much less of a financial burden on their shoulders. She was glad for that. She didn't like to think she and Tuck were a burden. Sending your child to college was expensive enough, but two at the same time? Just trying to do the math in her head of what tuition could have been for she and Tuck combined made her feel a little nauseated. Had she not gotten the scholarship, Paige knew she would have chosen a much less prestigious and expensive school to attend.

Tuck had been taking dance classes for as long as Paige could remember. In high school he had begun to really take it seriously. He was easily the best dancer in their school and Paige had expected him to apply to Juilliard or The New York School of Dance, something on the East Coast, at least. However, the only colleges he had applied to were small liberal arts colleges, most of them in towns Paige had never heard of. When Tuck had been accepted to Vallance, he and their mother had gone to Illinois for a campus visit while Paige and her father had flown to Stanford for a tour of the campus and swimming facilities. When they'd both returned home, Tuck was beaming.

"Vallance is it, Paige," he'd told her excitedly. "It's exactly what I was looking for. I can totally picture myself there."

Paige was happy for him, but knew that come the fall, they would be entering two completely different worlds.

Paige felt he train slow down and noticed that there were buildings beginning to pass by the windows now. She saw a church with a tall steeple and what looked like a John Deere store that had more tractors, mowers, and various farm equipment surrounding it than Paige had ever seen. She was too busy grabbing her bags and checking around her seat to be sure she hadn't forgotten anything to see much else. When she was certain she had everything, she went down the steps in the middle of the car that led to the door. She was the first down, but a line quickly formed behind her of others who were getting off in Solomon, too.

As soon as the train came to a full stop, the conductor opened the door and placed a yellow stool on the ground for passengers to use as a step. Paige eagerly climbed out of the train and began walking towards the tiny station look for Tuck. She heard him before she saw him.

"Paigey!" he yelled, waving his arms.

She finally spotted him. His hair was longer than he'd ever had it, in an off center part that covered his ears, and he'd grown a light beard and mustache.

"Shit, Tuck," she'd said as she reached him and hugged him hard. "You look like a lumberjack."

He laughed loudly.

"I'll take that as a compliment. You look cold. Where the hell is your jacket?"

"I, uh, may have forgotten it in my dorm," Paige said.

"As always, you are woefully unprepared for anything," he said teasing her, as she'd known he would.

"Yeah, well, I wouldn't have needed one if you'd moved somewhere more sensible."

"You act like we didn't grow up in Philadelphia and you've never been cold before. California is making you soft, P. Come on," he added grabbing her duffel bag out of her hands. "We'll go to the campus bookstore and you can buy an official Vallance sweatshirt to keep you warm!" He was grinning like an idiot as the two started walking toward the street.

"I'll wear it everywhere I go!" Paige teased him back. She always felt like whatever mood Tuck was in was infectious. It felt so good to just be around him again.

"I hope you don't mind a little walk. Campus isn't far at all. Just a few blocks up and few over," he told her gesturing.

"Are you kidding? I'm practically a professional athlete, Theodore," Paige said in a fake highbrow tone they used with each other sometimes, cocking her eyebrow at him.

"God I missed you," he said, smiling, and after a pause, "so what do you think of the town?"

"It's definitely quiet…and wholesome. Very American." She was trying not to judge the place too quickly, but it was hard. There weren't many people or cars around and the scenery looked like it wouldn't have been out of place in a Norman Rockwell painting.

"It'll grow on you, I know it will. By the time you have to leave you'll already be planning your next trip to come see me," he told her confidently.

As they drew closer to the campus they talked about Tuck's classes and the dances he would be in that night. It was just after 4 pm so they'd have just enough time to drop her things in his dorm room, buy her a sweatshirt, and grab some dinner before he had to be in the theater to get ready for the show.

A couple blocks from campus, Paige noticed a girl with black hair turning up a sidewalk in front of a strange wooden house. Paige watched her take keys out of her pocket, unlock the door, and disappear inside.

"That's the ugliest house I've ever seen," she told Tuck.

He laughed appreciatively. "Yeah, it's pretty bad. Maybe it's better on the inside?" he told her shrugging. "It's called The Log. A group of theatre girls live there. One of them is in a dance with me tonight."

Paige hoped, for those girls' sake, that it was better on the inside.

* * *

 

Charlie and Jo had left for the theater about 15 minutes ago. Emily was still sitting in the living room on the couch with her laptop on her legs, scrolling mindlessly through her Facebook. She glanced at the time, closed the computer, and headed downstairs to change. Earlier that day, before work, she had been able to get some laundry done, so she had a much larger selection of clothes to pick from than when she'd woken up that morning. She decided on a pair of light wash jeans and a purple top that fell off one shoulder over a black tank top. There was no reason to get dressed up for the show, but she wanted to look good just in case.

After making sure all the lights in the house were out (they'd racked up a pretty horrendous electric bill last month), Emily set out across the campus to the Lincoln Performing Arts Center where the theater was located.

Jo was sitting behind the plate glass of the box when she walked up to get her ticket.

"Hey, this really cute girl just bought a ticket. She wasn't  _my_  type, but I think you might be into her," she told Emily as she bought her ticket. "She asked me if there was anything to do around here to kill time so I told her about the art installation downstairs. You should go check her out." Jo looked at her with her eyebrows raised expectantly.

"I don't really feel like it tonight," she told Jo. She was still too worried about her loan coming through. "Thanks for thinking of me, though."

Jo winked at her and made a funny face. "Enjoy the show, then!"

Emily could tell she was trying to cheer her up and take her mind off the loan. She was thankful she had such wonderful friends here. Emily quickly spotted Charlie at one of the entrances to the theater and walked over to her.

Charlie was sexy. There was no other word for it. She just had this quality about her, a sort of confident ease that made guys loose it over her. It didn't hurt either that she had a great body from playing basketball and doing construction work and carrying objects and set pieces on and off the stage in her spare time. She had long brown hair that always looked like she'd just had sex.

"I thought you were running crew tonight?" Emily said to her.

"They were short an usher so I volunteered," Charlie told her, running her fingers through her hair, "which is lucky for you, because that means you get a super hot lady to escort you to your seat."

"There's not even assigned seating. You're being ridiculous," Emily told her friend, but slipped her hand into the crook of the arm Charlie had held out to her, anyway.

"Well, now if I don't make the cut for bridesmaid in your wedding, you'll already know what a competent usher I am."

"Oh shut up," Emily said laughing as Charlie stopped about 10 rows from the stage on the right wing of seats.

"Here you are ma'am. I'd sit near the aisle in case of a fire if I were you," Charlie delivered in a very serious tone.

"Very comforting, " Emily replied, laughing, and sat one seat in from the aisle so that Charlie could sit down with her for a few minutes before people really started arriving.

The girls chatted for a while about the episode of Grey's Anatomy they had just watched (Charlie thought Patrick Dempsey looked like a drowned rat) until Charlie had to get back to ushering in earnest.

"See you after," she said to Emily as she headed back up to the doors.

Emily sat and perused the program as the theater slowly started to fill up around her. It was 10 minutes to 7 and nearly every seat had been taken when someone finally sat down in the seat Charlie had vacated. It was a girl. Emily could sense that before she even looked up. And she smelled new, somehow. It reminded Emily of freshly printed paper—warm and sort of inky. She looked up, curiously.

The girl was looking around the theater with a bemused expression on her face and wearing a very vibrant purple and white Vallance sweatshirt. Her hair was a dark auburn brown and her face looked both hard and soft at the same time.

"Jesus," she was mumbling to herself. "What are all these people doing here?"

Emily narrowed her eyes at this girl and tilted her head a little to the side and asked, "Are you lost?"

The girl turned then and looked at her for the first time. She was so pretty that Emily lost her train of thought for a few seconds.

"What?" the girl was asking her.

"Did you buy a ticket?" Emily questioned her.

"No," the girl replied sarcastically. "I just wandered in off the street."

Emily was taken aback by her biting tone. "Sorry," she told her. "You just seemed really confused."

"No. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be rude," the girl backtracked quickly. "I guess I just didn't expect this to be so packed and I get sort of nervous in new places."

Emily continued to study the girl next to her. "Your sweatshirt is pretty misleading then," Emily said looking at the girl's bold clothing.

"Oh. I forgot I was wearing this," the girl said, smoothing her new sweatshirt down nervously.

Emily inadvertently titled her head the other way as she watched the girl run her hands down over her breasts and stomach.

"I guess I look kind of stupid," the girl continued.

Emily refocused, snapping her eyes back up to the girl's face. "No, you look great," Emily said without thinking and putting maybe a little too much emphasis on the word "great."

"Uh…so you don't go here?" she said quickly, hoping the question would distract the girl from Emily blatantly ogling her body.

"No, I'm just here visiting my brother. He's dancing tonight," the girl said pointing at the stage and then as she noticed she was pointing at the stage got an expression on her face that clearly told Emily she had just realized how unnecessary her gesture was. The girl's head dipped down embarrassedly and she put her hands back in her lap. Emily thought she was adorable.

"I just bought this sweatshirt today," she finished telling Emily quietly. Emily got the impression she was making the girl nervous and she sort of liked it. It only seemed fair when there was a flock of butterflies fluttering around in her own stomach.

"I'm Emily," she said, holding her hand out to the girl, praying her palms weren't too sweaty.

The girl smiled at her then, really smiled, for the first time and Emily felt a smile spreading across her face as well.

"My name is Paige," she said and put her hand into Emily's.

"It's very nice to meet you," Emily said as an excuse to prolong the hand shaking. Unfortunately, after that, there was nothing to do but stop shaking hands. Paige looked away again.

"The dance shows are a big deal around here," Emily said, picking the conversation back up. She didn't want to stop talking to Paige yet. "Vallanace has a really strong dance program. Your brother must be really talented if he's in the show tonight."

"He is," Paige nodded proudly. "He's one of the featured dancers, actually. He said his picture was in the program," Paige grabbed the program off her lap as she said this and began flipping through the pages to the center of the booklet where six dancers' headshots and a short bio appeared. "There he is," she said pointing to one of the boys. Emily leaned forward to look where Paige was pointing next to the name  _Theodore McCullers_. "That's Tuck."

"He's cute," Emily said smiling. "I'll watch for him."

"Well don't get any ideas, he's gay," Paige blurted out. She grimaced. She hadn't meant to say that. It came out more from nerves than actual intention. Emily was having a strange effect on her.

"That's okay," Emily replied a little puzzled by this pronouncement. "So am I."

Paige gulped. Rather dramatically.

"Oh, that's cool," she said, looking at Emily with a nervous smile faltering on her face and in a slightly higher voice than she had been speaking in previously. But she was staring Emily directly in the eye. She didn't even break the eye contact as she cleared her throat. Emily thought vaguely of a line from one of her favorite books.

_the world poured back and forth between their eyes once or twice_

"Yeah, I think it's pretty neat," Emily said, finally, in what could only be described as a suggestive tone, her eyes never leaving Paige's.

And that was when the lights dropped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The quote Emily thinks of at the end of this chapter is from Anne Carson's book The Autobiography of Red.


	4. The Dance

Paige had no idea what was happening to her. Her heart was racing and her stomach was churning. She felt hot, like her new sweatshirt was choking her. The symptoms reminded her of the Christmas she was nine and she'd eaten about 50 cookies and then Tuck had made her laugh and she'd puked all over the tree.

When the lights dropped she grabbed the hem of her sweatshirt and started to pull it over her head. She needed air. But somewhere in her armpit and neck region it got caught and she started to panic. Before she could freak out too much though, she felt hands yanking the garment over her head. As she came free, Emily handed the balled up sweatshirt to her. Paige knew that this was the moment in the story that she would puke. Having the sweatshirt off, though, was cooling her down quickly and, thankfully, she was able to keep it together.

As the music started playing through the theater, Paige did her best to focus on the dancers and not on the fact that she had almost just melted and suffocated in front of this pretty girl. The thought caught her off guard. She glanced quickly at Emily. I guess she is pretty, Paige admitted to herself as she looked at Emily's long dark hair and light brown skin. She was breathtaking, actually, with the delicate light of the stage falling over her face, chest, and shoulders like a dusting of powder. Paige thought fleetingly of the chalk that gymnasts would dip their hands and feet in before climbing onto the balance beam. She wanted to dip her hands in whatever it was that seemed to have settled on Emily. She needed to get a grip.

Paige focused back on the stage then and only risked glancing over at Emily when Tuck wasn't on stage. As perplexing as she found this girl, Paige was there to support her brother. And with that in mind, she gave him her full attention on the stage, but she could feel Emily's eyes on her every once in awhile. She seemed to have reached a heightened state of awareness, but only concerning these two people. She felt invaded.

Six dances later, the lights came up again.

"Is it over?" Paige wondered aloud.

"It's just intermission," Emily told her.

"Right. Halftime," Paige clarified for herself. "Intermission" was one of those words that always got stuck on the tip of her tongue.

"Sorry to keep bothering you," Paige said turning to Emily again (am I sorry? Paige wondered), "but could you tell me where the bathroom is?"

"It's not a bother," Emily answered. "I was just about to go as well. I can show you."

Paige and Emily moved to the aisle and walked slowly toward the exit along with about half of the audience. As they finally reached the back of the auditorium, Emily saw Charlie who was stationed at the doors again. Charlie looked Paige up and down and sent Emily a sly smile and slight nod. Emily rolled her eyes back, but felt herself blushing a little as well. Luckily, because of her complexion, people usually couldn't tell when she was blushing.

Finally the pair made their way down to the bathroom, but there was quite a line formed already. They fell in behind the other women, Paige standing behind Emily. They hadn't spoken since leaving their seats. It was starting to get awkward.

"So, you and Tuck," Emily said turning around to face Paige, "you're twins aren't you?"

Paige looked at her with an impressed sort of crooked smile gracing her face.

"Yeah, how did you know?" Paige and Tuck looked related, sure, but they were by no means identical. And now that they'd reached adulthood, most people couldn't tell they were twins.

"I don't know…there was just something about the way you were watching him, like you were up there with him. Like the dance was coming out of your eyes and being projected on to the stage," Emily said, shaking her head slightly. "That sounds kind of weird but that's the only way I can describe it."

"You were right, so I guess it's not that weird," Paige told her.

They had moved just inside the door of the bathroom now. Most of the women behind them seemed to have decided to hold it or find another bathroom somewhere.

"What about you, do you have any siblings?" Paige asked.

"Nope. I'm an only child," Emily answered. "It was kind of lonely growing up. But in high school and here, too, I've sort of formed a family out of my friends."

"It can be lonely, too, being a twin," Paige told her honestly. She had no idea why she was opening up to Emily like this. "I never really learned how to make friends because I always had Tuck."

At that moment, a little girl had thrown open the door forcefully and unexpectedly and it knocked Paige forward into Emily. Her left hand had instinctually gone to the wall above Emily's head to steady herself, but her right hand had somehow landed on Emily's hip and their faces were only inches apart. Rather than break them out of the intimate space they had entered in their conversation, as Emily expected it to, it seemed to sink them deeper into it.

"See? I have to depend on wayward children hitting me with doors just to get close to people." Paige smiled and pushed herself back away from Emily again; her eyes sizzling like a lit firecracker.

It was Emily's turn to feel nervous now. Having Paige pressed up against her, even for those few seconds, had sent her into a mental tailspin.

"You were doing fine before that little girl bulldozed in here," she told Paige shyly as she turned to head into the cubicle that had just opened up. "I'll see you back in the theater," Emily said as she shut the door.

 

Emily spent the entire second half of the dance show wracking her brain for some way to keep talking to Paige afterward. But she couldn't really think of anything. They were just two strangers that happened to sit next to each other in a theater. When the lights came back up again, Paige would go meet back up with her brother and Emily would return to The Log with her friends to celebrate Eden's first dance performance. She thought of asking Paige and Tuck to join her and the girls but she didn't want to intrude on their time together. She didn't want to seem creepy or pushy or desperate. She didn't even know if Paige was gay. And with these thoughts spiraling through her mind, Emily grew more and more somber as the show got closer to ending. She wanted to drink Paige. To chug her or sip her or gulp her in. Emily didn't care. She had to know her and she didn't care the speed or route of that knowing. She felt desperate. Emily had never felt such an immediate connection to someone. How could they just walk away from each other after this?

Despite all these feelings, it all still happened exactly as Emily didn't want it to. The last dance finished, the audience clapped for the last time, and the house lights came back up. With a despondent heart, Emily watched Paige stand up and tell her, "It was really nice to meet you."

Emily thought Paige may have hesitated. It was an almost imperceptible movement, like a kid playing Mother May I? But whether Paige's body was asking permission to stay or permission to go, Emily couldn't tell.

So she just said, "Yeah, you too," and helplessly watched as Paige left the auditorium.


	5. Three Halves or Two-Thirds?

It was a few minutes before Emily finally stood up to leave. As she moved toward the aisle, she felt something bumping against her feet. She looked down. It was Paige's sweatshirt lying on the floor, forgotten. Joy flared into Emily's heart. She grabbed the purple shirt off the ground, still inside out from when Paige had removed it, and sprinted out of the theater.

She saw Charlie and Jo standing near the wall, waiting for her, but didn't care. She was scanning the crowd still ambling around outside of the theater for any sign of Paige or her brother. Jo and Charlie had walked over to her now. They were trying to talk to her, but she wasn't listening.

"Charlie," Emily said in a rush without looking at her, "that girl I was with earlier, did you see her leave? Did you see which way she went?"

"Um, yeah. She headed that way," Charlie answered, pointing towards the gallery on the other side of the building. "What's going on, Em?"

But Emily didn't stay to answer. She took off as fast as she could, weaving through the slowly thinning crowd, her eyes sweeping for Paige as she went. Finally, at the very end of the building, behind a sculpture that involved a great deal of chicken wire and torn cloth, Emily saw them.

Paige seemed to be attempting to reenact a moment of one of Tuck's dances she had liked and Tuck was laughing loudly at her antics. Emily marched up to them and Paige, seeing her, immediately stopped her silly dancing.

"Emily," she said, startled by her reappearance.

"You forgot your sweatshirt," Emily told her breathlessly, holding the balled up garment out to her.

"Oh, thanks," Paige replied, grinning sheepishly.

Tuck looked between the two girls and decided he should remind them they weren't alone. They were just staring at each other now, both of them holding the sweatshirt loosely.

"Jeez, P," Tuck said, "you are determined to freeze to death this weekend, aren't you?"

This seemed to snap the girls back to reality.

"Tuck, this is Emily," Paige told him, finally pulling the sweatshirt out of Emily's hands. "We sat next to each other during the show."

"Hello, Emily," Tuck said, sticking his hand out to her, "I'm Theo. Paige is really the only person that calls me Tuck."

"You were great tonight," Emily told him as she shook his hand.

"Oh, thank you," Tuck said grinning. "So, I know we've just met, Emily, but I'm hoping you could do me a favor," he continued. "The choreographer and director want to talk to all the dancers and go over some notes about the show tonight. Would you mind keeping Paige company for about an hour while I do that? I know how she seems," he went on in a mock whisper, "but really, she's harmless."

Emily laughed as Paige backhanded her brother in the arm. "I'd be happy to," Emily said genuinely.

As Tuck walked away, Emily sent her friends a text telling them not to wait for her and Paige pulled the sweatshirt back over her head.

"Do you want to go for a walk?" Emily asked, sliding her phone back into her pocket. "The campus is really pretty at night."

"Sure," Paige told her. "Let's do it." She was smiling broadly, happy to have an excuse to spend more time with Emily.

They walked out together into the crisp autumn air. They followed one of the sidewalks meandering away from the building in silence for a while. It was Paige who finally spoke.

"I was really impressed by you earlier," she said, "picking up on Tuck and I being twins."

"I probably wouldn't have noticed," Emily replied, brushing off the compliment, "but I've been thinking about twins lately, anyway."

"Go on…"Paige said gently. "Why have you been thinking about twins?"

"Well," Emily looked over at Paige before continuing, "have you ever read Plato's _Symposium_?"

Paige shook her head in answer.

"I'm not trying to be highbrow," Emily went on apologetically. She didn't want come off as some literature snob. "It was assigned in one of my classes…"

"That's okay," Paige told her. "Is it about twins?"

"No. It's about Love, actually."

"It's about  _Love, Actually?_ The movie?" Paige was teasing her now (flirting, Emily hoped) and she had the cutest smile.

"Nooooo," Emily giggled. "It's about Love. It's all these old Greek guys arguing about what Love is."

"That sounds interesting."

"It is!" Emily was getting excited now, obviously she had found this story fascinating, and Paige had to admit she found Emily's enthusiasm endearing. "Well, one of the guys tells the others that when human beings were first created, we were all paired up, sort of glued back to back. Some people were man/man, some were man/woman, and some were woman/woman," Emily glanced at Paige as she said this last part but couldn't read the answer she was looking for in Paige's expression one way or the other. "So everyone had four arms and four legs and two faces. And we all just sort of cartwheeled around everywhere."

Paige's laugh was quickly becoming one of Emily's favorite sounds. "But the gods thought we were becoming too powerful or something," Emily kept explaining, "and split everyone apart, to how we are now—two legs, two arms. And that's what Love is. It's the search for our other half. To find what was ripped away from us and become whole, round people again."

"I think I see where you're going with this now," Paige encouraged her.

"It made me wonder about twins, I guess. I mean, do you think Tuck is your other half, or do you think it's…someone else?" Emily stopped abruptly as she said this and turned to face Paige.

Paige stopped, too, tucked her hands in to her hoodie pocket and leaned her head back as she thought. She was quiet for a few long moments as she considered the question.

"Well, to be honest," she finally answered, "it's hard for me to imagine ever being as close to someone else as I am to Tuck. I mean, up until last year, we did pretty much everything together. I've been struggling lately, to remind myself that I'm a whole person without him, actually. I think I'm still trying to figure out what I believe Love is, romantically. "

Emily was drinking it all in, every word Paige was saying. This was what she had been thirsting for. Paige went on.

"But I do believe that unless we can all figure out how to exist, first, as complete people on our own, we'll never be a good partner in Love. I see what you're saying, though. So to answer your question, using this analogy, I guess I think there can be three halves or that Tuck and I are two-thirds of something," Paige dipped her head in that adorable way again. "I just mean, that I think when I find the person I'm supposed to be with, they won't be threatened by my relationship with Tuck because they'll understand that it's different, a different kind of love. They won't see it as a competition."

"That was really beautifully said Paige," Emily told her as they started walking back towards the theater building. Paige was surprising Emily now, in the best way.

"Thanks," Paige said. "I think you bring out a poetic side of me. Or maybe it's this place," she continued, looking around at the muffled lamp posts dotted around campus, the old, towering trees, and the dark, quiet buildings hovering like monoliths at the edges.

"Well, I am studying Literature, and I love poetry," Emily told Paige. "But I think Vallance brings out my poetic side, too. "

"Do you write poetry?" Paige asked her.

"Sometimes. I try."

"I bet it's beautiful. You seem like you have a unique perspective on things. Maybe I can read something you've written sometime?' Paige had never in her life felt as comfortable talking to someone like this, other than Tuck.

Emily stopped. They were back outside the theater again. She knew they were about to say goodbye to each other, truly this time. But she felt none of the panic she had earlier. There was a calm that had settled like a blanket over her entire body in the past hour that she couldn't explain.

"You know," she told Paige, her heart smoldering peacefully in her chest, "I think you will read my poetry someday. I feel sure that we're going to see each other again."

Paige nodded, their eyes locked again. "I think so, too" she told her. "Goodbye, for now, Emily."

"Goodbye, Paige McCullers." Emily turned and walked back out into the dark campus, the name burning like a fresh tattoo on her tongue.

As she walked home, she thought about a lot of things, but what stuck her most was how  _full_ she felt, how satisfied. It was the first time that simply talking to someone else had had this effect on Emily. And she was reminded again, of a line from a book that she hadn't understood the first time she read it, but now the meaning seemed to be approaching her through the fog, becoming clearer and sharper the further she walked.

_What is the conversation of lovers? Compared with ordinary talk, it is as bread to stones._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The quote Emily thinks of at this end of this chapter is from Anne Carson's essay The Anthropology of Water in her book Plainwater.


	6. Months Pass and Photographs

Paige and Emily did not see each other again before Paige left to go back to Stanford on Monday afternoon. Emily finally heard back about her loan that Monday, as well, and was able to breathe a little easier. Her friends had teased her about how smitten she had seemed with Paige on Friday, but it didn't last long after she told them that Paige had only been visiting and Emily didn't even know where she lived.

Indeed, in the 6 months that passed before Paige and Emily saw each other again, Paige rarely thought of Emily, at least at first. Paige had found the whole encounter rather unnerving and pushed it to the back of her mind. She threw herself into swimming even more than usual because she found that unless she went to sleep completely exhausted, she dreamed about her body being pressed up against Emily the way she had been those moments during intermission in the bathroom. Whatever her body was trying to tell her, Paige wasn't ready to hear it, so she swam it into submission and found that it often drug her mind down into silence with it.

In November, Emily went back to Rosewood and spent Thanksgiving with Hanna, Spencer and Aria since her mother had gone to Texas to be with her father at the army base he was stationed at. She joined her parents in Texas for a week during Christmas and spent the rest of her break in Solomon rereading her worn copies of Harry Potter for the hundredth time and stock piling her energy for the coming term. She thought about Paige more often than she liked to admit.

Paige returned to Philadelphia for the holidays. She and Tuck visited their Grandma Hazel almost every day. They put Christmas lights on the tree house and had a Full House marathon by accident. And there were always the many church services she and Tuck were expected to attend around the holidays as the pastor's children. Although Paige was still figuring out what it was that she believed and how that differed from her parents' views, she found comfort in the familiarity of the tradition. The candlelight Christmas Eve service her father did had always taken her breath away with its beauty and she knew it wouldn't feel like Christmas without it.

Emily spent most of January eating clementines and writing poems about amputees. She was taking her first poetry workshop and the winter seemed different because of it, somehow deeper. The colder it got, the further Emily burrowed into the words that lay thick on her mind. She and the girls would walk to class in pairs with their arms linked as a way of steadying themselves on the ice that had coated the campus, shuffling along with their heads bowed low against the biting wind. They all developed a liking for brandy in the evenings; they would sit under electric blankets on the sectional at night, sipping the warming liquid and doing their homework, wishing the house was either better insulated or that they had endless amounts of money for the heating bill.

Then in February the sky had broken open and the whole town was covered in two feet of snow. Something about the blanket like snow had made the cold seem more bearable and Emily and the girls, on their way home from the scene shop one night, had stopped to have an impromptu snowball fight. Tuck had been wandering around campus that night, too, taking pictures of the new snow to send to Paige in sunny California. He knew that, despite her whining during the fall, she was missing the changing seasons while at Stanford. He spotted Emily and her friends running around under one of the lampposts by the student union and snapped a couple pictures of them mid-snowball fight. He sent the best one he had captured (Emily was dodging a snowball, her eyes squeezed shut with laughter) along with about a dozen others he had taken of the snow-covered campus to Paige in an email. Paige was surprised when she opened the picture and saw Emily's face, but brushed it off as a coincidence. But she printed the picture of Emily and her friends out and taped it on the wall next to her bed. She told herself she did it because she missed the snow.

* * *

 

In March, Tuck was cast in his first acting role at Vallance and he called Paige to tell her the news.

"Hey, T, what's up?" Paige had to call him back because she'd been in practice when he called originally.

"Paigey, I got cast!" he'd announced, having already told her he was planning to audition.

"Congratulations! I knew you'd get in."

"You did not," Tuck told her. "I've never really acted before outside of class," he said, referring to the Beginning Acting class he'd been in the previous fall.

"I did know, actually," Paige corrected him, "because I would never in a million years be cast in a play, which means that you got the acting genes."

"Can't argue with science, I guess," Tuck conceded. Paige could hear him laughing on the other end of the phone. "We're opening on the last weekend in April. Can you come? You have to come, Paige. I'm going to see if Mom and Dad will come, too."

Truthfully, the prospect of their parents being at Vallance while she was there didn't appeal to her much. Paige loved her parents and she would be happy to see them, but she knew if they were there she'd be stuck doing family things all weekend long and she wouldn't have a chance to, well…

"Of course I'll be there," Paige responded before she let her thoughts get carried away.

"You're the best, P. I gotta go, though. I've got a hot date tonight I've got to get ready for!" Tuck couldn't help telling her this news as well.

"Oh really? Well, don't do anything I wouldn't do," Paige told her brother.

"Well, that kind of limits my options, Paige," Tuck teased and then added, "Love you, bye!" and hung up before Paige could defend herself. She huffed as she hung up the phone and glanced at the picture on her wall as she threw her bag down on her bed.

* * *

 

On the other side of Vallance's campus, Eden had just burst through the front door of The Log and proclaimed to whoever was in hearing distance, "Guess who just got the lead in Eurydice?"

"Hmm," Charlie and Emily were sitting on the couch together doing some homework, and Charlie was bored and in the mood to annoy Eden. "From what I saw of the auditions yesterday, I'm coming to guess…Erica Lindon? She was on point."

Emily smirked and covered her face with her book. She didn't want to be the target of Eden's wrath, or even collateral damage.

"You're a jackass, you know that Charlotte?" Eden did not take her acting career, as she called it, lightly.

"I know," Charlie smirked, "but it's the only way I can get you to call me by my full name, and its so sexy when you do that, Edie. Come to bed with me." Charlie held her hand out to Eden.

Emily couldn't help laughing at this.

"Don't encourage her, Emily," Eden said.

"I'm sorry," Emily told her, fighting back a smile. "Congratulations, Eden. Who else is going to be in it?"

Charlotte had gotten off the couch by this point and was giving Eden a bear hug that Eden was fighting to get free of and pretending not to enjoy.

"Let's see," Eden's voice came out from Charlie's shoulder region a little muffled. "Jack is playing my father. Lucy, Esther and…geez, Charlotte, let me go! Thank you. Lucy, Esther, and Chloe are the chorus," Eden stopped to think for a moment. "Oh, and that dancer, Theo McCullers, he got cast as Orpheus, actually. I can't remember the others."

THUNK.

Emily had dropped her very large and very heavy French book onto the ground.

"Shit," she said, obviously flustered, as she uncurled her legs from beneath her to get up and retrieve it. "When did he start acting?" Emily asked trying to sound casual but failing.

"Um. Now, I guess. This is his first play as far as I know," Eden was staring at Emily with a quizzical look on her face, her eyes narrowed as she took off her coat and tied her curly, black hair back in a bun. "Are you okay, Em? You look…"

"Yeah..." Emily interrupted. "I think I just…have low blood sugar." Emily finished lamely.

"Let's make dinner then!" Eden said loudly as she left the room, obliviously. Charlie stayed where she was, though, hands in her pockets and looked at Emily knowingly.

"Still got the hots for his sister, huh?" she asked Emily.

"Jesus, why do you remember everything?" Emily said hurrying past Charlie to help Eden with dinner, slightly embarrassed at her own transparency.

"It's a gift and curse," she heard Charlie say in response behind her.

* * *

 

Emily couldn't remember ever, in her life, a month and a half going by more slowly. Even Hanna coming to spend spring break with her and the two of them driving up to Chicago for a few days didn't make the time go faster. The possibility that she might be seeing Paige again seemed to be stretching the days to a nearly unbearable length. More than anything, it was the not knowing if Paige would come to see the play or not that was driving her crazy. She didn't even know enough about the girl, like how far she would have to travel or what her schedule might be, to make an educated guess.

The only solace came to Emily one night when she was lying in bed, reading a few pages in her  _Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson_  before she went to sleep. She was flipping through the pages, having decided to read a few at random, when the first line caught her eye,

 _If you were coming in the fall,_  
I'd brush the numbers by  
With half a smile and half a spurn,  
As housewives do a fly.

 _If I could see you in a year,_  
I'd wind the months in balls,  
And put them each in separate drawers,  
For fear their numbers fuse.

 _If only centuries delayed,_  
I'd count them on my hand,  
Subtracting till my fingers dropped  
Into Van Diemen's land.

_But now, all ignorant of length  
Of time's uncertain wing,  
It goads me, like the goblin bee,  
_ _That will not state its sting._

She didn't know as she read it that first time, though it gave her such relief to see her feelings described so beautifully, that it was something she would return to many times during her relationship with Paige McCullers. But she did realize in that first reading that she wasn't alone. She and Emily Dickinson were linked through the years by more than just a shared name now. As Emily laid the book aside on her makeshift nightstand and clicked off her lamp, she sent a small thank you to the long dead poet, and fell asleep more quickly than she had in three weeks.

Paige, 2,000 miles away, was dealing with the impending meet, which she  _knew_  was coming, in the opposite fashion of Emily. She pretended it wasn't happening. She barely acknowledged her father's email with her flight confirmation. She almost hung up on her Mom when she called to tell her that she and her father were renting a car in Chicago and they would pick her up at O'Hare and drive down to Solomon the following Friday afternoon. It was stupid, Paige kept telling herself, to be nervous about seeing someone whose last name she didn't even know.

Finally, on Thursday night at 11:30 pm, she gave in to the nervous excitement she had been fighting and packed for her trip. She was about to close her suitcase when she decided to add one more item to it: the purple Vallance sweatshirt that had been so instrumental in she and Emily's first meeting.


	7. Round Two

It was noon, Friday. The opening night for  _Eurydice_  had finally arrived. It was a good thing, too, because Emily couldn't handle not knowing anymore. She was pacing back and forth in front of her bed, staring at two different outfits she'd laid out. She was leaning towards the grey pants and striped v-neck sweater, but she just couldn't decide. She needed a second opinion.

Emily hurried up the stairs and into the living room where her three housemates were lounging on the couch and watching an episode of Friends while they ate lunch. She stood in the doorway and considered each of them, trying to decide whose opinion she should get. She wasn't even trying to play it cool anymore.

"What's up, Em?" Charlie asked looking over at her.

Emily didn't answer Charlie's question because she'd finally decided.

"Jo, will you help me?" Emily asked.

"Yeah, sure," Jo replied putting her sandwich down on the coffee table.

"In my room," Emily clarified and took off downstairs again, trusting that Jo would follow.

"No offense, Em," Jo said as she descended the basement stairs, "but you seem kind of…manic. Are you okay?"

"I don't even know," Emily admitted. "I mean, I feel like I'm going crazy. Is she going to be there or not? I don't know! I'll find out in a few hours though, so either way…" Emily rambled.

Jo moved forward and grabbed Emily, who had resumed her pacing, by the shoulders and looked her in the eye. "What in the hell are you even talking about?"

"Paige McCullers," Emily said simply.

"That girl you met  _once_ , last fall?" Jo asked. "I didn't even know you were in contact with her. "

"I'm not! That's the point. So I don't know if she's coming tonight."

"Why are you so concerned about someone you barely know? You have to calm down," Jo told her.

"I just have this feeling about her. We have a connection. It's hard to explain," Emily said. Finally talking about it with someone was doing wonders, though. Emily felt herself starting to relax.

Jo looked at her, as if she was trying to decide something, and after a few moments, said, "Okay. I'll help you, but only if you maintain a resting heart rate."

Emily laughed and said, "I'm calming down, I promise. Okay, which of these outfits do you like better? And by that I mean, as a lesbian, which one would make you want to jump my bones?"

Later that evening, in the grey pants and orange and purple sweater, Emily, Charlie and Jo were walking in a group towards the Lincoln Center. They were talking and laughing with each other. Emily was grateful that, tonight, her two friends weren't working on the show. She had a feeling she was going to need some support tonight, one way or another.

The play tonight,  _Eurydice,_ was not being performed on the main stage, but in a smaller black box space referred to as Studio Theater. The plays done here were always very different because the space could be designed however the director desired, including the seating for the audience. Everything about this space was more intimate, too. The seats were minimal, there was no actual raised stage area, just open floor, and the actors were only a few feet away from the audience most of the time. For  _Eurydice,_ Emily knew because she had helped build the bleachers, the audience would be sitting on either side of the performing space, which was the middle third of the room, on six tiered bleachers with folding chairs. The actors would be between them, so that if an audience member looked directly across from them, they would be looking into the audience on the opposite side, like a mirror image. This was a bold move, in Emily's opinion, because it risked the attention of the audience in a way that didn't normally factor in to a performance. It also caged the actors in between them. It would either work immensely or fail dismally. Emily loved theatre for that exact reason. It was risky. She strongly believed that the best plays always fucked a person up a little. She knew whether a play failed or succeeded by how she felt afterward. Emily had left all of her favorite plays feeling like she'd just been in a bar fight with someone she'd been making out with in the bathroom moments before they'd started throwing punches. She was hoping this would be the case tonight. The story of Oedipus and Eurydice was one of her favorite Greek myths and she hoped the play would do it justice.

Emily tried her best to keep her thoughts on the play she would be seeing rather than the girl she might be seeing. The closer she and her friends drew to the theater, though, the more her thoughts drifted to the girl. As they walked into the large room that served as a lobby for Studio Theater, Emily glanced around for someone standing on their own, but everyone seemed to be standing in groups of threes or fours. Her heart fell a little. Paige wasn't coming. She wasn't there. Emily turned to face her friends, effectively turning her back to the room. The three of them had been chatting for a few minutes when Jo nudged Emily's shoulder, nodded toward the other end of the room, and said, "Em, is that her?"

Emily was scared to turn around for some reason. She was afraid that it  _would_ be Paige and afraid that it  _wouldn't_. Afraid of what each of these things would mean. But her body was itching to spin around and check. Her mind and her body came to a compromise and Emily glanced, in what she hoped was a casual manner, over her shoulder. She looked around the room, but she didn't see Paige.

"Where?" she asked Jo turning back around.

"Ooh, I see her," Charlie cut in. "Damn, she looks good. I think she dressed up for you, Em."

Emily turned her head the other way, but she still couldn't see this girl her friends had so easily spotted.

"Guys, where?" Emily was getting slightly annoyed.

"Here," Charlie said, "switch places with me." And she grabbed Emily roughly and spun both of them around so that Emily was suddenly seeing the room properly.

Jo saw on her face that she still hadn't located Paige, so she leaned toward Emily and said, "See that middle-aged couple right in front of the doors? She's standing behind them. Wait for them to shift a little and you'll see her."

Emily spotted the couple and held her breath, waiting and hoping that one of them would just  _move_ a little. Then the man turned towards whom Emily assumed was his wife and Emily saw her. It was Paige, leaning casually against the wall chatting with the couple. She was wearing boots, skinny jeans, and a leather jacket. Charlie was right. She looked hot. Her hair was a little longer than in the autumn. She looked more toned, too, and her jaw seemed more defined. It suddenly occurred to Emily, as she took in the scene before her, who the middle-aged couple must be: Paige and Tuck's parents. Emily couldn't help feeling a little disappointed that she couldn't invite Paige to join her and the girls.

* * *

 

Paige was, indeed, standing with her parents at that moment, using all of her mental power try to focus on what her mother was telling her about her Aunt Kay and Uncle Russ and the 30th wedding anniversary party her parents had attended for them the week before, when all she wanted to do was look over to where she'd seen Emily walk in with her friends.

Not long after Emily finally caught that glimpse of Paige, the house manager opened the doors to let everyone into the theater. Paige lost track of Emily as she and her parents got their programs and picked out their seats. It was still about 15 minutes before the play would begin and Paige realized, with a lurch in her stomach region, that because of the way the bleachers were set up, she and Emily would be able to see each other if Emily sat on the other side. She still didn't know what it was exactly, but this was it. _Round Two_ , Paige thought to herself.

"Sweetheart?" her mother was asking her a question that she hadn't heard over her own thoughts.

"Sorry, what did you say, Mom?"

"Is this where the dance show was that you saw Theo in?" Paige's mother asked again.

"Oh, no, it was upstairs on the main stage. You know, the...traditional theater," Paige said.

Her mother nodded at her.

"I was in a play, once," her father said unexpectedly.

"Really? When?" This surprised Paige. Her father was not really dramatic. He could deliver a spirited sermon, but Paige couldn't even imagine him agreeing to put on a costume. "You remember, Anne? With the football team?" he said to his wife.

"It was more of a skit, Nick," she replied, and then, for Paige's benefit said, "It was at a pep rally senior year of high school. Your father played the executioner."

Paige burst out laughing. "What? Who did you kill, Dad?"

"Just a turkey. It was Thanksgiving."

Paige continued chuckling, picturing her father pretending to chop off the head of someone dressed as a turkey, and turned forward in her seat. She flipped through her program for a few minutes and then looked up. Sitting directly opposite her on the other set of bleachers was Emily, unabashedly looking at Paige. Paige was sure she had been watching the whole interaction she had just had with her parents. Emily was smiling at her, like she had just been waiting for her to look up. Paige felt heat rush into every inch of her body. Emily mouthed, "Hi," to her as she and Paige locked eyes. Paige gave her a small wave in return.

For the second time since they had met, as Paige and Emily stared at each other, the lights in the theater dropped.

But this time, when the stage lights came up, they were still staring at each other.


	8. Don't Look Back

Emily settled in for the play, with the hope that she might get to talk to Paige for a few minutes during intermission.

Paige looked like she had during the dance show; extremely focused whenever Tuck was on stage and mildly interested when he wasn't. It was during these latter times that she would catch Paige looking across the room at her.

After this happened a couple times, Emily caught Paige's gaze and then looked pointedly at actors, as if to say, "Why aren't you paying attention?" And Paige did a sort of wonky grimace and shrugged her shoulders to say, "Oops, sorry!" But continued looking at Emily anyway until both girls were grinning.

When the lights came up for intermission, Emily watched as Paige's parents got up and walked out of the theater. Paige, however, stayed where she was and glanced over at Emily. Emily lost no time. She excused herself from her friends (Charlie smacked her lightly on the ass in encouragement) and headed over to Paige on the other set of bleachers.

"Hey, stranger," Emily said smiling as she sat down, "where have you been?" she asked jokingly.

Paige laughed. "California, mostly." She answered Emily's question seriously.

"Ah, I've been wondering. You never did tell me where you went to school."

"Well, I like to be a little mysterious," Paige grinned. "I go to Stanford, actually."

"Wow! Very nice. Why Stanford?"

"They offered me a swimming scholarship I couldn't turn down," Paige replied.

"Oh, you're a swimmer. That's explains your physique, then," Emily said. Paige blushed at this. Emily was openly flirting with her now; she couldn't help herself. She'd been waiting six months to be able to flirt with Paige.

Paige tried to recover her previous swagger. "Yeah, I'm kind of a big deal," she said making a smarmy face, which made Emily laugh.

"So, are those your parents?" Emily continued asking all the questions that had been running through her head during the play.

"You are just full of questions tonight," Paige chuckled.

"Sorry," Emily told her, "I guess I am kind of drilling you."

"That's alright. You can question me. I don't mind. Yes, those would be my parents, Nick and Anne McCullers," Paige answered and then asked what she had been wondering. "Are you enjoying the play? You've probably seen more plays than I have so I figured I should get your opinion."

"I'm really enjoying it. I have a good view," Emily slipped this remark in casually and continued. "Tuck is doing a good job. And that's my housemate, Eden, playing Eurydice. They have nice chemistry together."

"Oh, really? And here I thought you'd just come to the play to see me," Paige said and wondered,  _Am I flirting with her?_ as she said it.

Emily wasn't sure either, but she felt emboldened by this remark from Paige and the way Paige had been subtly glancing at her outfit during their conversation, so she plowed on before she could lose her nerve.

"You're probably busy later," Emily began, "with your family, but if you and Tuck are free tonight, my friends and I are going to this frat party at the TKE house…"

Paige hadn't been expecting this and it made her feel flustered.

"Um, I don't really know what Tuck had planned for tonight. He's got this new boyfriend he wants me to meet so we'll probably be hanging out with him," Paige told Emily, noticing her face falling slightly at what she was saying. "I'll mention it to him, though. Maybe we'll see you there," Paige added.

"Yeah, sounds good," Emily said, but she had a feeling Paige was letting her down easy.  _I guess she wasn't flirting with me,_ Emily thought. "Anyway, I should get back to my friends and I'm sure your parents will be back in soon," Emily said standing up. But she couldn't help adding, "It was really good seeing you again, Paige." She wondered if the truth and sadness of this statement was as audible to Paige as it had been to her own ears.

She wasn't sure why she did it, maybe because she  _could_  hear all of that in Emily's voice, but Paige stood up suddenly and gave Emily a very awkward hug. Emily was so caught off guard that she just stood there, looking surprised with her arms hanging at her sides.

"It was good to see you, too, Emily," Paige said very cordially. And then, "I like your outfit. Okay, then, bye," all in one rushed breath.

"Bye," Emily replied with her eyebrows creased in confusion and feeling rather shell shocked as she walked back to Jo and Charlie on the other side of the room.

When Emily returned to her seat, Jo and Charlie were both wearing expressions of confusion. They'd obviously been watching her interaction with Paige.

"How'd it go?" Jo asked.

"And what the fuck was that hug?" Charlie added.

"It was fine until I invited her to go to the party with us tonight," Emily said as they moved back in their seats to let her pass by on the way to her own. "And then it got awkward and she said she was busy and well, you saw the hug."

When Emily sat down, she noticed that Paige was sitting slumped over with her face in her hands.

"Sorry, Em," Jo said sympathetically.

"I think you killed her," Charlie laughed, looking at Paige's current posture. "She collapsed when you left."

* * *

 

After the play ended, Emily, Jo, and Charlie waited in the lobby for Eden to come out and they all rushed her for a group hug when she appeared, still in her thick layers of stage makeup.

"Edie, you were fantastic!" Jo told her.

"Seriously, you were," Emily agreed.

"You put Meryl Streep to shame. I was totally turned on," Charlie told her.

"Thank you, ladies," Eden replied to them all, beaming. "You're too good to me!"

"I hope you aren't too tired to go out now, because girl, I am going to show you a good time," Charlie told Eden.

"And I think Emily needs a drink," Jo said as Paige and her family passed by the group on their way and Emily gave them a forlorn look.

"We'll tell you while you take your makeup off," Jo said in reply to Eden's questioning look as they all headed back into the green room.

* * *

 

"Alright," Anne was saying to her children after Tuck had received congratulations all around, "we'll see you two at the restaurant for brunch tomorrow. You sure you don't want to stay at the hotel with us tonight, sweetheart?"

They were standing in the parking lot outside of the rental car.

"No, I'll just stay with Tuck in the dorms tonight, Mom," Paige assured her.

"You kids have a good night," Nick said, and with a knowing look at them both, added, "And make good choices." He knew that his children always got into a lot more trouble when they were together than they ever managed when they were apart.

Tuck and Paige both smiled. Something had drastically changed in their father the day Paige had thrown the coaster at Tuck. Nick seemed to realize, as the doctor had stitched up his son's head, what was really important to him in regards to his children. As it turned out, sexuality wasn't one of those things. Rather than grill them about their grades and doing more extracurricular activities, he told them he was proud of them more often, came home every night for dinner, and took them out on the weekends to see movies and play miniature golf, the way he had when they were little.

"It was a horrible thing to do," Paige's mother had told her in confidence one afternoon," but I think when you threw that coaster at you brother, it knocked some sense into your father."

After their parents had left for the hotel, Tuck had turned to Paige, waggling his eyebrows at her and said, "I hope you're ready to dance!"

"I thought we were meeting up with Carlos tonight?" Paige said. Carlos was the guy Tuck had been seeing for the past month and a half.

"We are," Tuck said, grabbing Paige by the arm, and dragging her off toward his dorm building, "but we aren't just going to sit around and stare at each other. There's a party on campus tonight and Carlos really wants to go check it out. I thought it would be fun."

"It isn't at the TKE house by any chance, is it?" Paige asked with a sinking feeling. She was horribly embarrassed by the weird hug she'd given Emily and the prospect of seeing her again so soon made her want to crawl into a hole and hide.

"Yeah, how did you know?"

"Emily mentioned it to me," Paige told him.

"When did you talk to Emily?" Tuck asked.

"During intermission."

"It didn't take you two long to run into each other," Tuck noted.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Paige said defensively.

"Nothing. Sorry," Tuck responded, thrown off by the harsh tone in her voice. "You okay, Paige?" he added.

"I'm fine," Paige said, not sounding like she was at all.

"Please don't be surly when you meet Carlos," Tuck said, pleading with her. "I really want him to like you…not be scared by you."

Paige shot him a look that clearly said,  _Fuck you._

Tuck sighed. This wasn't going well. "What's wrong? I don't even know why you got upset in the first place," Tuck tried reasoning with Paige.

Paige, however, had no desire to tell Tuck what a fool she'd made of herself, so she just said, "It's nothing. Let's just drop it," and looking over at Tuck added, "I will be nice to your boyfriend."

"Thank you, Paigey," Tuck said smiling. "And you're okay with going to the frat party?"

"Sure," Paige told him, hoping that it would be a big enough party that she wouldn't run into Emily.


	9. Dirty Dancing

Emily wasted no time. As soon as she and the girls walked in the door of The Log, she headed straight for the fridge, grabbing some pineapple juice, strawberry margarita mix, and off the top of the fridge, rum and the very last of a bottle of Wild Turkey and placing them on the counter.

"Em…honey," Eden was standing behind her looking nervously at all the things Emily had just gathered, "just…go slow, okay?"

"Yeah! Em, let's do this!" Charlie had just come in and quickly located a large plastic pitcher. "Oh man, once I'm done with this," she said about the drink she was starting to mix at the counter, "you are not even going to remember this night."

"Come on, Edie," Jo said as she came in carrying some empty Nalgene water bottles, "we're in college. What's wrong with getting a little sloshed on a Friday night?"

"Well, first of all," Eden said to Jo, "I think 'sloshed' and 'a little' contradict each other. And second, can we please just stick together tonight? Last time we did this, you," she pointed to Charlie, "wandered off and fell asleep in the park. You," she turned to Jo, "ended up having a very unsafe threesome with that chick from Dining Services and that townie. And Em, you nearly fell off the roof!"

"Okay! We'll stay together. Promise," Jo responded, crossing her heart.

"This needs orange juice," Charlie said tasting her concoction.

Emily laughed and took a moment to appreciate her friends while she grabbed the carton of juice from the fridge.

* * *

 

An hour later, Emily was already sufficiently buzzed on what Charlie had named The Widow Maker. Charlie had a knack for making up mixed drinks that were strong, delicious, and whose taste hid the amount of alcohol she packed into it.

It was 10:30 pm, the perfect time to head to the party. Things would be in full swing at the TKE house. Emily left her grey jeans on, but changed out of her sweater and into a low cut, fitted green tank top. She knew she would get hot dancing in the crowded house and she also wanted to look hot just in case Paige showed up.

The four girls filled up their water bottles with more of The Widow Maker (Charlie was insisting they say it in a Jamaican accent) and headed across campus. On the weekend nights, the usually quiet campus was crawling with students wandering back and forth between dorms, apartments, and houses, laughing and yelling with their friends. Emily was feeling good—warm and loose and ready to have some fun. They had worked out a system for parties during their first year that worked perfectly: pregame at home until everyone was nice and buzzed and then drink on the way to the party. There they would find a bush to throw their water bottles under so they could be unencumbered in the actual party. The next day they would retrieve their bottles again. No one ever took mysterious, homemade bottles of alcohol from underneath a bush.

They could hear the music swelling out of the house as they approached. It was a huge place, three floors with a big open room encompassing most of the ground floor. The frat brothers would move all the furniture up against the walls so that most of the floor was open for dancing on party nights.

* * *

 

Paige was already inside, working on her third beer, when Emily and her friends walked in. She was only slightly buzzed. She, Tuck, and Carlos had arrived half an hour before and the boys had quickly disappeared into the crowd of dancing people. Paige had left her leather jacket back at the dorm, leaving her in just her white t-shirt, but it was so hot in the house that it was already starting to stick to her skin. Paige was sitting on a couch that had been pushed back against the wall and trying to keep as far away from the entwined couple that was sharing the sofa with, when she saw Jo pushing through the crowd, pulling Emily behind her. Jo spun Emily around and the two fell into an easy dance. Paige could tell they had danced together many times. They even seemed to have a little choreographed set of dance moves they did. It looked a little reminiscent of The Routine Ross and Monica did on Friends, but reworked for a crowded setting. Emily laughed the entire time they were doing it and almost fell down. The alcohol in her system had turned off Paige's anxious brain and she shamelessly watched, leaning forward slightly, as Emily's skin began to shine with sweat.

Without stopping to over think what she was about to do, Paige threw back the last half of the beer she was drinking and began to make her way toward where Emily and Jo were on the dance floor. When Paige reached them, Emily was facing away from her. Paige put her hand on Emily's shoulder and leaned in close to her ear so she could be heard over the blaring music.

"Can I join you?" she asked.

Emily turned around, gave Paige a sexy look, grabbed her hands, and pulled her forward to dance with them. The three girls danced together for a while, but Jo made some significant eye contact with Emily after about 5 minutes and left the two of them alone.

Paige wasn't the best dancer. Even in a social setting, she never seemed to know what to do with her hands. Emily was amazing. She may not have been good at choreographed dances, but her body moved and swayed naturally to the music. Paige couldn't take her eyes off of her.

At first, Emily only grabbed Paige's hands with her own for brief periods of time to twirl or pull Paige a little closer to her. But eventually she stopped pulling back. She moved close to Paige and instead of letting go of her hands, like she had been, she placed Paige's hands on her hips and the two moved with each other to the music.

Paige felt mesmerized. She pressed herself closer to Emily, her eyes raking over her sweaty chest and down into her cleavage, and then back up to her eyes which looked black and hungry.

After dancing like this for 10 minutes, the two girls were pressed against each other completely. Paige had moved her hands to Emily's back and they were resting just above her ass. After another few minutes, Emily put her arms up around Paige's neck, bent her knees a bit and then pulled her body back up, sliding against her partner. She heard Paige let out of low groan. Then Emily spun around in Paige's arms so that her back was to Paige's front. Paige had stopped thinking entirely at this point. She had returned her hands to Emily's hips and she pulled her backwards so that she was completely flush against her and Emily shamelessly ground her ass against Paige. Emily had her right hand fingers laced with Paige's and with her left she reached behind her, tangling it in Paige's hair and pulling the other girl's face down into the side of Emily's face and neck. Paige started to move her left hand forward off of Emily's hip and onto her abdomen as they danced. She had been sweating before, but Paige was wet everywhere now.

At this point, Emily couldn't take it anymore. She broke apart from Paige's body, though it nearly killed her to do so, but kept a hold of her hand and started to lead her through the crowd toward the front door.

The porch was too crowded, so Emily continued with Paige down the front steps and tugged her around to the side of the house. When Emily felt they were in a secluded enough spot, she grabbed Paige and pushed her roughly against the side of the house.

"You're so fucking sexy, Paige," Emily purred before she put both of her arms around Paige's neck and hungrily pressed her mouth against Paige's.

The kiss only lasted a second, if that. Paige pushed Emily away with a scared look on her face. Being out in the cool night air again had snapped her out of the trance she had been in on the heat of the dance floor.

"What are you doing?" Paige said.

"I was trying to kiss you," Emily answered, not sure what the problem was. "There's no one around," she added, thinking maybe Paige wasn't big on making out in public.

"I…" Paige stammered, "I'm…I'm not gay."

Silence. Emily was flabbergasted.

"You're joking right?" She blurted out after neither of them said anything for several seconds. The alcohol in her system was making her much less tactful then she would normally be.

"No," Paige said more loudly this time with her back still pressed against the house. "I'm not gay."

"Then what the hell was that? Why were you dancing with me like that?" Emily asked, losing her patience rapidly.

"It was just dancing," Paige said more quietly again, willing herself to believe what she was saying.

Emily felt both crushed and humiliated. The alcohol was also making her feel more emotional than normal. She could feel tears starting to well up in her eyes.

She took another step backwards from where Paige had pushed her away, shaking her head and looking at the ground. Then she looked up at Paige, looked her right in the eye, and said, "I'm too drunk to deal with this," and walked away, leaving Paige still plastered against the side of the frat house.


	10. The Aftermath

Paige did not feel good. She felt like she was a little sick kid waiting for her parent to pick her up from school. But a school she didn't go to. Her eyes started to water. She wanted Tuck and she wanted to go home.

With these two things in mind, she moved shakily off of the wall and back up the front stairs and into the house. The rest of the world seemed not to notice that something horrible had happened. Paige felt like a bomb had gone off and no one else had gotten the memo. She looked desperately through the crowd for Tuck, her only source of comfort in this place, in the whole fucking world it seemed like. Somewhere in the back of her mind, Paige knew she was overreacting, but she couldn't help how she was feeling.

She moved slowly around the room, shoving past people and getting stuck and having to go back the way she came several times. If Paige didn't find him soon, she felt like she was just going to sink onto the floor and start weeping. She had almost given up when she felt a hand on her shoulder and all of a sudden Tuck was there and she'd never been happier to see him. He took one look at her and could tell something was very wrong. She wasn't being surly, as she had been earlier. She looked terrified and exhausted and the moment she saw him, she began to cry and collapsed onto him. Carlos was behind Tuck. He looked worriedly at Paige and nodded his understanding when Tuck told him he needed to take Paige back to the dorm and then half carried his sister out of the stuffy house.

Once they were outside and moving slowly in the direction of Tuck's dorm, he looked carefully at the still crying Paige and said, "You threw another coaster, didn't you?"

"I don't know," she choked out. "I didn't mean to."

"Come on, Paigey. It's going to be okay, whatever you did."

20 minutes later, the twins had finally made it back to Tuck's dorm and onto his bed. He was sitting with his back against the wall and Paige was lying down with her head on the pillow and her legs stretched across Tuck's lap.

"Just tell me what happened," Tuck said, patting her calf.

Paige glanced over her shoulder at Tuck, and then buried her face in the pillow, starting to feel embarrassed.

"I started dancing with Emily…" Paige didn't want to go into detail. She couldn't even believe how sexually she and Emily had been touching each other and she certainly didn't want to tell Tuck about it. "And things got weird," she finished lamely.

Tuck narrowed his eyes as he looked at his sister. She wasn't telling him something. He could tell that much.

"Things got weird," he repeated and then he realized why she was acting so embarrassed, his eyes widening. "Oh my god, Paige, you dirty danced with her didn't you?!"

Paige didn't answer, just buried her head more firmly into the pillow.

"Wow. I didn't think you had it in you," she heard Tuck say. Then he went on, "So what? So you got a little slutty on the dance floor. Who cares? It happens to the best of us."

"That's not all," Paige sighed dramatically. "Then we went outside and she kissed me, sort of. I pushed her away."

"I don't really see the problem," Tuck told her honestly.

"I'm not gay! That's the problem," Paige shouted.

Tuck looked at her long and hard before he said anything.

"You know, Paige, it would be okay if you were."

"Yeah," Paige huffed in disbelief. "In what world?"

Tuck could tell this was really bothering Paige and he had a pretty good idea of why. Knowing his sister as well as he did, though, he proceeded with caution.

"Look, I know you're really upset right now, Paige. But can you try to listen, like really listen, to me for a minute?" Tuck's eyes looked pleadingly at Paige. He waited for her to glance over her shoulder at him and nod before he went on. "After I came out, I told you it wasn't something we could share, but I didn't mean that you couldn't be yourself, Paige. Gay or straight. I just meant that sexuality is something really personal. I had to figure it out on my own before I could share it with anyone else. If you were gay, that would be okay, Paige. No one would be mad at you, especially not me. "

Paige didn't respond. She just stared blankly ahead at the opposite wall.

"Paige?" Tuck needed some kind of response to know she'd heard him, at least. Eventually she nodded. "Let's go to sleep okay? I'll take the couch tonight; you have my bed. You've had a hard night," he said to Paige as he moved off the bed.

"Okay," was the only response she could muster. She felt like she'd been hit by a train.

* * *

 

After leaving the party, Emily fished her (and Charlie's) water bottle back out of the bush they'd thrown them under across the street, and headed away from campus.

Solomon was a train town. Some train tracks even formed a portion of the campus' boundaries. The sound of the train whistle blaring out across the campus at all hours of the day and night had become as welcome and familiar to Emily as the sound of her friends' laughter. The first week of Emily's freshman year at Vallance, the train had kept her awake at night. Now when she went back to Rosewood, she found that the silence bothered her and made her uneasy.

It was in the early spring of her first year, restless from a long winter of being cooped up, that she had stumbled on the train yards during a walk. She had been walking across a small bridge and saw them stretching out on either side beneath her—rows and rows of unused train cars, dark and quiet in the moonlight. It had taken a while, but she'd eventually found a safe path down the steep ground under the bridge that led to them. She felt like she had walked into a cathedral, wandering between the hulking, metal boxes. She still felt that same reverence each time she went back.

Her feet took her there instinctually, even drunk as she was and getting drunker as she walked. She slipped a little on the path under the bridge and ripped a hole in the knee of her jeans catching herself, but she didn't care. If she had cut herself, she couldn't feel it yet.

Once in the yard itself, she picked a car at random and threw the water bottles up on top, where they landed with a loud, hollow thump that reverberated through the metal of the car. Emily climbed up the ladder on the side of the train car and hoisted herself on to the top to join the bottles.

She felt horrible. She had been so sure, when she and Paige were dancing together, that Paige felt the same way. She had moved forward on that faith, climbed it like a staircase, trusting that Paige was behind her. But when she had finally turned around, to confront those feelings, found herself utterly alone.

She drank the rest of one of the bottles and then lay back to look up at the sky. Emily could only ever recognize one constellation: The Big Dipper. She let her eyes drift lazily across the sky until she found it. Tonight it felt like a friend and she used it as an anchor to keep herself from floating away completely. The world seemed to be spinning around her as she drifted into space.

"I'm so drunk," Emily said to no one. "Eden is going to kill me." Very distantly, Emily heard her cell phone ringing but -

_it's impossible to answer a phone in space_

she thought as her eyes closed.

* * *

 

Emily jerked back awake at 4:30 am. Her phone was blaring incessantly. She still felt a little drunk. She dug her hand into her pocket and answered.

"Hello?" Emily said in a gravelly voice.

"Where the fuck are you, Em? Do you have any idea what time it is?" Eden did not sound happy at all.

"I'll be home soon, Edie, don't yell."

"The last time we saw you, you were dancing with Paige. Then you disappear and the next thing we know, Paige is being drug out of the party in tears and then you're MIA for  _4 hours_. We've been worried sick trying to find you!"

"I'm sorry," Emily said. "I'll see you at home." She hung up the phone.

The news of Paige's state as she left the party made her feel about a hundred times worse than she did already. She felt like she could barely walk under the weight of the guilt pressing down on her.

The sky was just starting to lighten when Emily limped through the door of The Log half an hour later. She  _had_  cut her knee when she fell and it was hurting a lot.

Eden started in on the lecture immediately, but Emily spoke over her.

"Not now," Emily said with a harsh finality in her voice.

"Em, what did you do?" Jo asked looking at her knee.

"I danced with the devil in the pale moonlight," Emily replied sarcastically.

"Alright, come on," Charlie led Emily into the dining room and over to one of the chairs. Then said, "Pants off."

Emily didn't ask questions. She just popped them open and slid them off as Charlie walked away. Emily had known, as soon as she realized how badly her knee was cut, that Charlie would be the one to bandage her up. Charlie came back with the first aid kit. She gently cleaned the wound with hydrogen peroxide and cotton balls, smeared some antibiotic on it, and covered it with a large bandage.

"Okay killer, take these Tylenol with a big glass of water and head to bed." For someone who spoke mostly in sexual innuendos, Charlie was, surprisingly, the most nurturing of her friends.

Emily didn't stop to pick up her pants or do anything but take the Tylenol. She went downstairs, peeled off her tank top and bra, fell into bed, and slept until late in the afternoon.


	11. A New Friend

When Paige got back to Stanford on Monday, she made a decision. It would be May in a few days. Her classes would be ending in a few weeks and then she would have finals. She also had swimming to think about. Paige just didn't think she could handle doing all of that _and_ trying to figure out what the hell her sexuality was. There was only so much one person could bear, she reasoned. So Paige decided to ignore herself and her thoughts and feelings until summer. It was definitely wasn't the best decision, and Paige had a feeling it would backfire on her somehow, but she made it anyway. In short, she slipped into the peaceful denial of an undetonated bomb.

As soon as she got back to her dorm room, she pulled the picture of Emily and her friends having a snowball fight off of her wall. She was just about to drop it in the trash, her hand hovering over the bin, when she thought better of it. Whatever happened in the end, Emily had shown her something about herself, had made her feel something no one had before. And that was worth remembering. Instead, Paige pulled out the wooden box from underneath her bed, wrote  _Emily_ on the back, and placed it, among the other items in the box, on the top of the coaster stained with her brother's blood. Then she closed the lid.

* * *

 

Usually, Emily would have been looking forward to the cast party. But since the incident at the frat party—that's what Emily was calling it, The Incident—she felt like she was getting over a bad case of the flu. She was unfocused and tired and she certainly didn't feel like socializing with a bunch of cheery thespians. She couldn't avoid the party though, because Eden had volunteered to have it at The Log. And the only thing worse than going to the party in her own house would be avoiding her own house for an entire night.  _A rock and a hard place,_ Emily thought as she, Charlie, and Jo tidied up the house while Eden was out buying food and alcohol with money she'd collected from the cast and crew.

"Em, it's been a week," Jo said, collecting dishes from around the living room. "Are you ever going to tell us what happened?"

"I told you. Paige and I were dancing. I thought she was into me, but it turns out she's just a handsy straight girl."

"I saw you two dancing," Charlie cut in while shoving an armful of shoes into the coat closet. "She wanted a piece, Em. I don't care  _what_  she said."

"I just thought maybe we could look into the whole 'crying Paige' thing. Don't you think that's weird? I mean, what did you say to her?" Jo went on.

"Why does it matter? It's not like I'm ever going to see her again. The whole thing was humiliating," Emily responded.

"No, but you're going to see her brother," Jo told her very matter-of-factly.

Emily stopped dead. The cloth she was using to dust fell out of her hand.

"Oh my god…Tuck!" Emily said slapping her hand against her forehead.

"Don't tell me you forgot he was going to be here tonight?" Charlie said seeing Emily's reaction.

Emily had forgotten. In all of the general party dreading she had been occupied with, she'd managed to completely forget that Tuck was one of the leads in the play and would  _definitely_  be attending the cast party.

"Oh my god," Emily said again. And then to no one in particular, "What am I going to do? He probably hates me. I emotionally wounded his sister." Emily covered her face with both of her hands and sat down on the coffee table.

"He could probably give you some tips on how to get into Paige's pants," Charlie said. "You know, show you where you went wrong."

"You're not helping, Charlotte!" Emily said in exasperation.

"Or you could just avoid him," Charlie offered, shrugging her shoulders. "Or, you could try to make out with him, too, make it like a family affair. They  _are_  twins."

"Charlotte!" Emily shouted.

Jo had collapsed onto the couch from laughter at this point.

"I hate you both," Emily huffed in mock anger and went to go take out the trash.

* * *

 

People started filtering into The Log around 10pm for the cast party. As per usual, it began with strictly those who had worked on the play in some way, but as the night wore on, those peoples' friends and boyfriends and girlfriends arrived.

Emily ambled around in the crowd talking to a few people. There was a beer pong table set up in the kitchen and she stopped to watch Liz, the stage manager, beat Eden at a game. She was avoiding the living room where she'd seen Tuck drinking and talking with some of his friends.

As she wandered around the party, though, her mind started to wander back to the previous weekend, to the way Paige's body felt against hers. Emily realized, with a heavy sigh, that she wanted to fix what happened, somehow, to get some sort of closure concerning the situation. And Tuck was the closest she was going to get to that. She rubbed her eyes wearily as she realized what she wanted to do was apologize.

Emily moved to the living room doorway and chatted with a girl from her poetry workshop until she saw Tuck's friends head off to get more drinks. She walked up to him very timidly, almost chickened out, but finally approached him and said, "Hey, Tuck. Shit. I mean Theo. Sorry. "  _Jesus,_ Emily though,  _I've fucked the whole thing up before I even started._

He just chuckled a little and replied, "Hey Emily. How are you?"

"Well, I didn't spend my evening walking through hell, so I'm better than you," Emily told him, referring to the play, and trying to break the ice with a cheesy joke. Surprisingly, it worked.

He laughed in earnest, but it sounded so similar to Paige's beautiful laugh that it felt more like a defeat than a victory in Emily's heart.

"Can we talk?" Emily asked him.

"We can, but do you really want to do it here?" Tuck asked, glancing around at the crowded room. He seemed to already know the conversation would be of a personal nature.

"Do you want to go on the roof?" she suggested.

"Really?" His eyes had lit up like a little kid's might at this prospect.

"Sure, we do it all the time."

The two headed up the stairs. The roof was accessible from both Eden and Charlie's bedrooms. However, it sounded like Charlie was entertaining a guest, so Emily led Tuck through Eden's room to the window. She opened it and hoisted herself out, then turned around to give Tuck a hand.

"This is so cool," Tuck gushed as they settled themselves on the slight slope of the roof.

It wasn't a great view, just the small town street with its brick sidewalks, an apartment building and its parking lot, and the gas station and convenience store in the distance. Tuck was delighted, though.

"Oh my god, you can see the Quickie from here!" He said excitedly about the convenience store.

"You seem like a cheap date," Emily said slipping into teasing tone with him. It seemed natural.

"Uh. Rude," he huffed, but laughed loudly while he did. "I totally am, though. It only takes like two drinks."

"Ooh, I'll have to remember that," Emily said in a seductive voice. And then, seeing her opening, went on, "Speaking of drunken disasters…"

Tuck looked over at her with warmth in his eyes. "You don't owe me an explanation, Emily."

"I appreciate you saying that, but I still feel horrible, especially about the way I left things," Emily was struggling to get her words out. She wanted to say this right. "Even though I was hurt and embarrassed, I shouldn't have walked away and left her in an unfamiliar place like that. And since I can't apologize to Paige face to face, I felt like I should at least apologize to you. I can tell how close you two are by the way she talks about you and watches you when you perform. So, I know it must have hurt you, too, to see Paige like that. So I'm sorry. I didn't treat your sister right. And I know that."

Emily maintained eye contact with Tuck the whole time she spoke. She wanted him to know how earnest her apology was. And now that she finished, he was staring at her like she was a new species or a UFO. He finally spoke after a long pause.

"Paige told me you were the most perceptive person she'd ever met. I can see now what she meant," Tuck told her. "I didn't realize I needed to hear…well, something from you about it until you started talking. So thank you for insisting. "

Emily nodded. She was glad she'd found the courage to apologize, too. She felt better already.

"I don't want you to think the whole thing was your fault, though, Emily," Tuck said.

"What do you mean?" she asked. Despite what her friends had told her, Emily was ready to accept full responsibility for what happened between her and Paige.

"God. Paige would kill me if she knew I was telling you this," Tuck started, "but you deserve to know. The thing is, what you have to understand about Paige…it's like her body is running about ten steps ahead of her brain. She feels things and can't stop herself from acting on them. She always has to learn things the hard way. Whatever it was that happened between you two, Paige hasn't even begun to process it."

Emily was listening intently, trying to understand what Tuck was getting at, but she was still confused.

"What I'm trying to say is, I think there was a reason she danced with you that night, but I don't think she's realized what that is yet," Tuck finished.

"I appreciate what you're trying to do," Emily told him, "but I don't want to get my hopes up that maybe I wasn't wrong about…her."

"I'm not trying to get your hopes up," Tuck said, beginning to realize that despite how brief their interactions had been, Emily had developed genuine feelings for Paige. "I truly believe Paige still has to figure out what she wants in life. I don't know if she's gay or not. That's not what I'm saying."

"Okay, then maybe I don't know what you're saying," Emily admitted.

"I've never told anyone outside of my family about this, because I knew they wouldn't understand and they'd just judge her. But I think it's important that you do understand this," he said, scooting closer to Emily and reaching up to the left side of his head. Emily wasn't sure what to expect, but she watched as he combed through his hair with his fingers and then spread the hair apart, revealing a long scar running vertically along his head, just behind his ear.

"Holy shit, is that a scar?" Emily asked leaning forward to get a better look in the dim light from the window behind them.

"It is," Tuck confirmed. "Paige gave it to me. She threw a marble coaster at me the day I came out to my family."

Emily looked horrified, but she kept quiet, sure that Tuck would explain.

"I really failed Paige that day," he said, shaking his head sadly. "I actually believed for about 12 hours that she hated me because I was gay. That wasn't true, obviously. I should have known that. She felt like I had abandoned her by not telling her before I told our parents. We're so close, you know? I know now that she didn't mean to do it. But I think since that day, she's been almost scared of herself, of feeling something and losing control again, the way she did."

Emily wiped a tear off of her cheek. It sounded like a horrible way to live, suppressing all your feelings out of fear of what they might make you do.

"I think she couldn't help feeling something with you last weekend and it scared the shit out of her and when her brain finally caught up, she shut down again," Tuck finished his explanation.

"I wish I had known," Emily said, more to herself than to Tuck. "We're all so…human. But it's hard to remember we  _all_ are, somehow. That everyone is just as filled with the past as we are. It's hard to get outside of our own experiences, sometimes." Emily thought she sounded like one of her journal entries, completely indecipherable to anyone but herself.

But then Tuck spoke. " _I think we keep ourselves so tightly wound we never see our spools. We saw them, clear as skeletons, that time. What's wrong? What's right? To know that you could take the heart and eat it raw."_

Emily just stared at him.

"It's from a poem, one of my favorites," Tuck explained. "What you were saying reminded me of it."

"That was exactly what I was trying to say," Emily said in awe. She'd never met someone else who seemed to think in poetry the way she did. "On Sundays, in the morning, Eden usually makes pancakes. You should come tomorrow, Theo."

Tuck smiled at her, the corners of his eyes crinkling slightly.

"I would like that," he told her. "And, Emily, you can call me Tuck."

* * *

 

The next morning, Tuck came over at 10 am for pancakes and he stayed all day with them at The Log. They decided to watch Moulin Rouge and Tuck was the duet partner Eden had always dreamed of. He and Jo had an in depth discussion about Tegan and Sara which turned into a discussion of Grey's Anatomy which, somehow, turned into a conversation about war reenactors. After he volunteered to make homemade pizza for dinner, Tuck taught Charlie how to tie a knot in a cherry stem with her tongue, which she insisted was the last piece of seduction she had yet to master. He even brought over the poetry book he had quoted from the night before for Emily to borrow without her having to ask.

That was the day Tuck began to become one of their best friends. Over the months he fell seamlessly into their group like a piece they hadn't known they'd been missing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The poem that Tuck quotes during this chapter is Beth Ann Fennelly's Madame L. Describes the Siege of Paris from the book Open House.


	12. Look But Don't Touch

"Well, I'm gonna go," Paige said, looking around the room and spotting her underwear and bra in a pile beside the door. She got off the bed and hurriedly put them on, locating her pants and shirt, which were on the desk, as she did so.

"Okay, um, are you sure? You can stay awhile…sleep here if you want."

Paige yanked on her shirt and turned around to make eye contact while she pulled on her pants.

"I have a really early flight back to Philly tomorrow so I should probably get back to my dorm."

"Right, well...I had a great time tonight, Paige. Could I call you over the summer, at least?"

"Um. Yeah, I…" Paige said, pulling her flip flops out from under the desk chair and sliding them on her feet. "You know, I had a nice time, too, David. I'm just going to be so busy this summer. Maybe we could just touch base in the fall."

He got up off the bed and said, "Let me get dressed, I'll walk you out." Clearly, he still thought he had a chance with Paige and could salvage the situation by being as gentlemanly as possible.

"But Paige held up her hand in front of him and said quickly, "No, don't bother. I'm sure I can find my way out. Thanks again for…" she stammered. "You really have a…"  _God, could I be more awkward?_  she thought, opening the door. "See you next fall," she finished, shutting the door on the confused boy and then hurrying down the hall and out of his apartment.

As soon as she got out of the building, Paige checked her phone and saw that some time during the night, Tuck had sent her a text.

"Can't wait to see you TOMORROW!" it said.  _Maybe I'll just call him,_ Paige reasoned.  _It was rude of me not to answer his text. I don't want Tuck to be mad._ She felt sort of panicky and she noticed as she opened her favorites list to call Tuck that her hands were shaking slightly, but brushed it off as a chill from the cool night air.

"Paige?" Tuck answered, his voice heavy with sleep.

"Hey, did I wake you up?" Paige said feeling slightly bad.

"What do you think? It's like 6 am here," Tuck, who was already back in Philadelphia, groaned at her.

"Oh, I, I didn't realize, I guess," Paige told him, wondering how she had missed noticing how late it was when she'd opened her phone.

"Why are you up so late?' Tuck asked.

"I had that end of the year swim banquet tonight. And then a bunch of us went to a bar after. I must have lost track of the time," Paige told her brother. But her voice sounded kind of hollow and shaken.

"Paige, are you okay?" Tuck asked her. "Why did you call?"

"I just saw your text. I didn't want you to be mad because I hadn't answered." Saying it out loud, Paige could see her logic had been slightly flawed. "I mean, I just wanted to talk to you, I guess…" she trailed off.

"Are you crying?" Tuck was starting to get worried. She wasn't making much sense and he'd heard a falter in her voice.

"What? No," Paige replied, but as she said it, she felt something wet against the knuckles of the hand clutching her phone. She reached up with her other hand and wiped tears away from both of her eyes. For reasons she couldn't explain, Paige started laughing. "Huh. I guess I am."

"Please tell me what's wrong," Tuck said. "You're worrying me, Paige."

"Do you remember when we were six," Paige said, rather than answering, "and I put my hand on the waffle iron right after Mom told us not to touch it?"

"Vividly," Tuck responded. "I can still hear your scream."

"I knew it was hot. I knew Mom wasn't lying. But I couldn't help myself. I just had to feel it."

"But why?" Tuck never had understood that particular trait his sister possessed.

"Otherwise, I would've spent my whole life wondering."

"You're not going to tell me what's wrong, are you?" Tuck wasn't sure why he tried, sometimes. Paige always did whatever she wanted.

"I just wanted to talk to you," Paige said, realizing that was the truth. "I'm sorry I woke you up, Tuck. I'll see you later this afternoon, okay?"

"Alright. You're easier to get information out of face to face anyway," Tuck relented. "I love you."

"Love you, too. Bye," Paige responded and hung up.

When Paige got back to her dorm, she felt comforted by the emptiness of it. Her roommate had gone home for the summer already. The walls were bare and the room had been stripped of every personal and homey touch. Paige felt like she was standing at the beginning of something, like she could start again and figure things out. She felt free and lonely and raw, like the carrots she used to help her grandfather pull from the soil of his garden. She laughed at this image as it ran through her mind.

For once, Paige told herself, she was going to think before she acted. It would be The Summer of Look But Don't Touch. She wanted to start again, to go back to the beginning of herself and figure things out. It was only about 2 hours now until she had to leave for the airport. Rather than sleep and be even more tired when she woke up after such a short time, she decided to stay up now and sleep on the plane.

Paige thought about how to spend her time. She wanted to start again right now, to clear away the dead leaves that had piled up around her soul over time. She thought about what was at the very root of her, to when she had been happiest and sure of the things she loved. She remembered back to the summers of her childhood, eating a bowl of mint chocolate chip ice cream, alone in the sweet, cool, dark of the living room with the flicker of the TV playing across her face, and her own pure laughter breaking out of her mouth in bursts.

 _I want to go back to that,_ Paige thought.  _I want to start there._

The only things left in her room were three suitcases. She went over to them and pulled out her laptop and binder of DVDs that she was taking home with her, flipping through the discs until she found what she was looking for. Then she slipped it into her computer. She turned out the lights, climbed onto her bed with her laptop, and pressed play.

As the unmistakable opening notes of the  _I Love Lucy_  theme song began to play into the empty room, Paige felt herself grin, wishing for nothing in that moment, but a bowl of ice cream.

* * *

 

The Summer of Look But Don't Touch (though, it wouldn't be until years later that Emily found out Paige had named it this) was beginning well for Emily.

She decided she would just stay at The Log again because it was beginning to feel more like home than Rosewood. And with her mother spending more and more of her time in Texas, the only people tying her to the place were Spencer, Aria, and Hanna. When Emily told them she was staying in Solomon for the summer, all three had decided to come visit for the first two weeks of July. Emily suspected they didn't enjoy going home to Rosewood much either, anymore. They had outgrown the place. Their visit was still a month off, though.

Eden was away at the theatre camp near Chicago for most of the summer. She had secured a job there as a counselor and contributor to the acting workshops. Emily laughed at the thought of Eden roughing it in a cabin or tent. She wasn't sure how rustic the camp would be, but she had a feeling that Eden wouldn't be too pleased. She was someone who liked long, hot showers and fluffy, clean comforters.

Jo had decided to go home to Milwaukee, Wisconsin and help her dad out with his contracting business. He mostly did things like basement remodels and improvements to existing structures. Jo's mom had died when she was in high school and she always spent school holidays and breaks with her dad because she didn't want him to be alone. The two of them also owned three Labrador retrievers and Jo missed them a lot when she was at Vallance. Often times, after a call with her dad, Emily would ask Jo for Dad and Dog Updates, as she called them, because she knew it made Jo happy to talk about them.

Charlie was staying in Solomon for the summer as well, which Emily was thankful for. She wanted the company and the help with the rent. Emily didn't think she could handle the whole $500 by herself on her fitness center salary. The previous summer, when Emily and Eden had been the two staying at The Log, they had, for the most part, done their own things during the day and then hung out at night. This summer, Charlie was insisting they adopt some sort of project to do together. She told Emily that they needed to think of something now that summer had officially started and they were the only two in the house. The very next day, she hopped on Emily's bed at 7 am, bursting with an idea.

"Why are you awake?" Emily said groggily as Charlie bounced around on her mattress.

"You know me," Charlie said in a chipper voice, "I keep odd hours."

"Well, I don't," Emily said pulling the sheet over her head. "Go away."

"But I have an idea!" Charlie made no move to abandon her mission to rouse Emily.

"For what?" Emily was not following at all.

"For our PROJECT!"

"Charlotte, you are insufferable. Were you serious about that yesterday?"

"Damn fucking serious," Charlie responded. "If you get up, I'll make you bacon and eggs."

"We don't have bacon and eggs." Emily had barely scrounged dinner together last night. She needed to go shopping.

"Yes, we do," Charlie corrected her. "I went shopping."

Emily stuck her head back out of the covers at this news.

"When?" She said suspiciously.

"I told you, I keep odd hours."

Emily knew Charlie wouldn't leave her alone until she got what she wanted. Grumpily, she pulled the covers back and stood up, glaring at Charlie.

"I like my bacon extra crispy," Emily said while thinking it was going to be a long summer if Charlie was going to wake her up this early every morning.

An hour later (Charlie really had outdone herself with breakfast), sitting happily in the dining room, Emily finally let Charlie tell her about her project idea.

"I want to do a mural," Charlie began. "In here, on that wall," she explained pointing to the long blank wall of the dining room that wasn't broken up by windows.

Emily could see an excited gleam in Charlie's eyes. Charlie had taken a painting course during the winter and had loved it more than she'd ever expected. Emily should have expected this, since Charlie had told her the month previous that she was itching to try something large scale.

"I'm totally on board," Emily told her friend, "but a mural of what?"

"Well, I was thinking that  _you_ should pick out a poem or a quote or something and we could design it around that," Charlie explained.

Now Emily had the excited gleam in her eye. Her face broke into a smile and Charlie could see she was all in.

Emily had to work at noon, but she spent most of the morning with books spread out all over the couch, looking for the perfect bit of something to build a mural around. The possibilities were endless, though. It was hard to choose.

* * *

 

Most of what Emily's job entailed was sitting at a desk at the entrance of the fitness center and asking people to sign in and out and show her their IDs when they came in to work out. She also controlled the TVs and music and had to wipe down all the equipment and generally tidy up before her shift ended. It was pretty boring, but Emily liked it, especially during the school year because she could do her homework. Today she took her _Norton Poetry Anthology_ and lazily thumbed through the tissue thin pages, reading poems at random.

Emily had faith in literature the way most people have faith in God. The right stories, the right memoirs and essays, the right poems, always came to her when she most needed them. She knew that the perfect words were waiting for her somewhere. She just had to find them.

A sweaty guy came over when her shift was about to end and asked her to change the channel on one of the TVs just as she was turning a page. She grabbed the remote and went closer to the TV to oblige. When she came back, it was there, the poem. She ran her fingers lightly over the page as she read "A Blessing," by James Wright three times in succession, seeing all the mural possibilities in her mind's eye. When her shift ended 15 minutes later, Emily hurried home to show her find to Charlie.

Charlie was once again cooking when Emily walked in and flopped the book down in front of the cutting board on which she was currently slicing a zucchini.

"Last three lines," she told Charlie. "What do you think?"

Charlie read in silence for a moment and then read the last three lines aloud.

" _Suddenly I realized_  
if I stepped out of my body I would break  
into blossom."

Charlie smiled. "It's perfect, Em. Let's do it!"

That night, during dinner, they talked about the design ideas each of them had, Charlie jumping up to point to a certain sections of the wall a few times, until they settled on an idea they both liked.

The next day, the two girls went to the hardware store downtown and bought paint— white and primer to go over the light brown that the wall was currently painted, and about twenty small cans of every color they could think of. They bought different sizes of brushes and a tray and two rollers and also some flat, rectangular contractor pencils just because Charlie thought they were hardcore. It was a little pricey (and heavy) but, Emily reasoned, if they did it right, it would be worth every penny.

It took five coats, painted over the course of the week with drying time, to even get the wall completely white with no brown showing through. They kept the windows open and three fans going in the room, but Emily still felt a little dizzy with paint fumes their first couple of days. Once the wall was sufficiently white, they set out with the pencils, painstakingly sketching out the mural.

Emily began with the text of the poem. In almost the exact center of the wall, using a loose, thick, stylized sort of script, she spelled out the words. Meanwhile, Charlie began to sketch out a barbed wire fence along the bottom fourth of the wall. Once they were done with that, they started sketching the flowers.

They didn't rush. The days of June slid like ribbons past them. When their arms got tired, they lay down on their backs and talked. They listened to music and danced around the house in just their underwear when the temperature climbed into the 90s and higher. They made popcorn and watched movies. Emily even bought a few water guns at the dollar store and they spent an entire afternoon chasing each other around the block and screaming at the top of their lungs. Something about hanging out with Charlie made Emily feel like she was a little kid again. And all the while, the mural slowly took shape.


	13. Independence Day

Paige was outside of the TKE house again and Emily was pressing her up against the house with her hands tangled in Paige's hair. Emily pressed her lips lightly against Paige's at first and when Paige didn't pull away, she stared to deepen the kiss, her lips opening and moving slowly. Eventually, Emily ran her tongue just over Paige's bottom lip, coaxing her mouth open, making sure she wanted it. And when Paige moaned, Emily slipped her tongue inside and ran it along the roof of her mouth, causing Paige to lean even further into her, her own tongue beginning to move with Emily's.

No one had ever kissed Paige like this, with such a delirious mixture of passion and patience. Emily slid her hands down from Paige's neck and onto her chest, cupping her breasts so lightly that Paige wasn't sure it was actually happening. Paige broke the kiss and looked down at what Emily was doing with her hands. She was squeezing more firmly now, licking her lips slightly as Paige watched her.

"Is this okay?" Emily asked.

"Yes," Paige answered breathily, getting more turned on by the second.

Emily was rubbing her hardened nipples through the fabric of her shirt and bra. As she did this, she leaned into her and slid one of her legs between Paige's. Then she leaned her face into Paige's ear and whispered, "I want you," before sucking lightly on Paige's earlobe and then running her tongue along the rest of her ear.

Paige let out a long groan of pleasure while Emily ground into her and, moving her mouth back to Paige's, resumed their kissing. Emily slid one of her hand's down to Paige's waistband and flicked open the button easily. Then she slid the zipper down, and at the exact moment she slid her tongue back into Paige's mouth she also slid her hand into Paige's underwear.

"Fuck," Paige moaned,

"Emily…"

The name she spoke out loud as she opened her eyes. She was alone, lying flat on her back in her bed and panting. It took her a moment to realize that it was her own hand that was moving between her legs. Paige didn't stop to think about what she was doing. She was so turned on by the dream she'd just had. She needed the release. It didn't take long before her hips bucked up and her back arched and she was riding out her orgasm.

"Well," Paige said to the dark of her room as her heart rate slowed back down, "that was new."

Paige glanced across the room at her luminous clock and saw that it was 3:46 am. Then it dawned on her that it was the 4th of July. Paige had been home in Philadelphia for over a month.

She had continued, in that time to try to get back to what she felt was the true core of her being. This involved doing a lot of things she used to do when she was a kid, because, Paige had decided, kids didn't think about their motivations or the pressure put on them by other people. When kids did things, they did them because they liked the activity, whatever it was. Paige had lost herself somewhere along the way and now she was finding herself again.

When she wasn't being a lifeguard at the neighborhood pool, Paige spent a lot of time reading comic books in the tree house and drinking orange Fanta. She visited her Dad at his office at the church and went to pick up the mail for him from the P.O. Box at the Post Office down the street. She made Tuck go to the park with her to play football and Frisbee golf. They visited their grandma and helped her in the garden. The freckles that used to dot her cheeks and the top of her nose reappeared. She spent a lot of time barefoot. She felt pure. Paige started to slowly trust herself again and she figured when it was time to address the sexuality issue, her body would let her know, because she was learning to listen to it instead of fear it.

Paige took this dream as her body's way of saying it wanted Paige to consider this option. The strangest sensation came over her; she felt like she was beside herself, literally. Like her mind had separated itself from her body and the two were laying side by side in her bed, holding hands.

"Okay, body," she said out loud. "Okay."

Paige tried to go back to sleep, but her mind was too busy thinking about her body. Eventually she gave up and went downstairs, thinking she would just find something to watch on TV until the rest of her family woke up. Paige's family was going to her Aunt Kay and Uncle Russ' later in the day for the holiday; they had a pool in their backyard and always had a big barbeque for the whole family on Independence Day.

With her body still buzzing from the dream she'd just had, Paige padded quietly down the stairs. She knew she had some kind of connection with Emily, that much she could admit. And she could even see, though it scared her a little to admit it, that she was attracted to Emily. But did that mean she was gay?

Paige was so caught up in her thoughts as she walked into the living room, that she didn't hear the other set of footsteps coming around the corner from the kitchen. Tuck walked around the corner when Paige was about a foot away and his sudden appearance startled Paige pretty badly.

"Holy shit, Tuck!" she said, stumbling back a few steps, hand clutching at her heart.

He looked unfazed. He'd heard Paige coming.

"What are you doing up?" Tuck asked her.

She considered the progress she had made over the summer so far and couldn't bring herself to lie to him.

"I had a super vivid sex dream and couldn't fall back to sleep," she said.

The two looked at each other for a few seconds, Tuck narrowing his eyes ever so slightly.

Then he said, "You wanna watch TV?" They stared at each other for another few seconds.

"Why are  _you_ up?" she asked him.

"Because you are," he said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"Yeah, okay," Paige replied to both of these pieces of information and they sat down on the couch together. She grabbed the remote, switched on the TV, and looked through the menu until she found some Golden Girls reruns.

An entire episode went by before Tuck spoke again.

"You wanna talk about it?" he finally said, turning to his sister.

"Not really," Paige said still looking at the TV. "It was Emily. I don't want to weird you out. I know you're friends with her now."

"I don't want you to explain it to me in detail," Tuck said, "but usually a sex dream doesn't keep someone from going back to sleep. Did it upset you?"

"No…it didn't upset me," Paige said truthfully. "It was just…it got me thinking about…stuff."

"About your sexuality," Tuck stated.

"Yeah," Paige said quietly. "I mean, being attracted to one girl, does that make me gay?"

Tuck could tell this wasn't a question Paige was actually expecting him to answer. Silence fell between the two of them again and began to stretch across several minutes, but Paige wasn't paying attention to The Golden Girls anymore. Tuck watched her out of the corner of his eye, like he knew Paige had more to say.

"That morning I flew home, when I called you. I had sex with this guy," Paige said and looked over at Tuck to see his reaction to this news. He seemed pretty neutral about the sudden confession.

"Oh, really?" was all he said.

"Yeah," Paige went on. "His name's David. He's one of the swimmers on the guys' team. He went to the bar with everyone that night."

"Do you like him?" Tuck asked.

Paige thought for a moment, then shrugged. "He's nice. And funny. He's a good swimmer."

Tuck just quirked one of his eyebrows, as if to say, "That didn't answer my question."

"No, I guess not," Paige conceded.

"How was the sex?" he asked. Tuck was in a strange mood. He seemed to be keeping his words to a bare minimum and was overly wary of bullshit.

Paige was a little taken aback by his question, but he was looking at her so earnestly, she felt she owed him an honest answer.

"It was…it was…fine. It didn't feel  _bad,_ " she said. She definitely hadn't been blown away by it.

"Were you turned on?" Tuck asked.

"Not like I was with Emily. No," Paige admitted, finally cottoning on that Tuck was not asking her all these questions out of curiosity. He was trying to help her figure things out.

"I have this theory," Tuck said suddenly, "about sexuality. I think it's a lot less about sex than people make it out to be. Whenever people talk about sexuality, it's always about fucking. And it is that, obviously, but its more, too, I think."

Paige was listening to her brother with rapt attention now. Tuck glanced at her and then continued, "I think it's more about that moment right after sex. I think sexuality is who you're still attracted to that moment right after you've finished having sex with them. It's whatever it is that keeps you in the bed, just wanting to stare at the other person. Sex is great, but you have to want the person the rest of the time, too, all those millions of other moments."

"After it was over," Paige said, "I just wanted to leave. He wanted to call me, over the summer. But I told him no."

"Just some things to think about, Paige. I know you'll figure it out," Tuck said, not wanting to push her into a conversation she wasn't ready to have. Then he looked back at the TV and so did Paige, but only one of them was really watching it.

They both fell asleep again, there in front of the television, Paige leaning onto Tuck's shoulder and drooling a little.

* * *

 

 

Later that day, Paige and Tuck and their parents arrived at the family barbeque. Paige looked around for her Grandma Hazel and when she spotted her, immediately trotted over to join her at the table on the patio, which was shadowed by a large umbrella.

Grandma Hazel, other than Tuck, was Paige's favorite person in the world. She always spent time with her whenever she got the chance. Because their parents had both worked, Tuck and Paige had spent most of their childhood with their Grandma Hazel and Grandpa Frank.

Hazel was a powerhouse of a woman. She was a wonderful cook, still whipping up delicious dinners now that she was in her 80s. She could play the piano and, especially around the holidays, would spend an hour or two at a time, playing songs for Tuck and Paige and singing with them. She wore high heels at all hours of the day. The sound of her clomping around on the tile in the kitchen used to wake Paige up in the morning when she and Tuck would stay over. Hazel always spoke her mind.

Grandpa Frank had been a much quieter person. He'd liked to garden and grew beautiful roses. He used to sit on the patio behind their house with Paige and Tuck and tell them stories he would make up on the spot. He'd loved to fish and he'd always worn a flat brimmed baseball cap.

When Paige and Tuck were in the 4th grade, Grandpa Frank had passed away suddenly from a stroke. Grandma Hazel had been crushed when he died and Paige had made it her goal to cheer her grandmother up every day because when you're ten years old, you aren't as frightened of the sadness of others.

Looking back on it, Paige still wondered how someone who had been married for 50 years could ever get used to being without that person. It just didn't seem possible. Thinking about it still made Paige's heart literally ache in her chest. But then again, Grandma Hazel was no ordinary woman. Paige cherished her relationship with her grandma.

She walked up to her and kissed her on the top of her head in greeting.

"Hey, Grandma," Paige said. "How are you?"

"It's hot as hell out here, dear," Hazel replied. Paige laughed.

"Yeah, it is," she agreed. "You want some lemonade or something?"

"No, thank you, I already had three glasses. My old bladder can't handle much more," she told Paige, slapping her knee at her own joke and chuckling. "What have you been up to since I saw you four days ago?"

Paige knew her Grandma meant this as nothing more than a joke, but she'd been wondering if she should talk to her about what she'd been trying to figure out. Paige decided to go for it. Grandma Hazel knew Tuck was gay and she didn't care one bit, so why should it be different for Paige?

"Actually, Grandma," Paige began and then let out a deep sigh, "I've been trying to figure out if I'm gay or not."

Paige held her breath until her Grandma said, "Well, in my experience, genitals have been known to lie. But not the heart. It'll point you right."

"What would you think, though," Paige asked, craving her grandmother's approval, "if I  _was_ gay?"

"I would think that you're the girl I always thought you were," Hazel told her.

"You thought I was gay?" Paige asked incredulously.

"No," Hazel said in a clear, strong voice. "I thought you were  _brave._  It takes a lot of courage to be who you truly are, dearheart."

Paige beamed. Grandma Hazel winked at her and patted her hand, then held it in her own wrinkled one.

"Do you remember the time you almost drowned in this very pool?" Hazel asked Paige, pointing to the pool with the hand she wasn't using to clutch Paige's. She could always sense what Paige needed.

"No," Paige said, even though she did remember. She wanted to hear her Grandma tell it because it was one of her favorite stories. "Tell me."

"Well, you were about, oh, eight years old, I'd say. You and Tuck had been in swimming lessons for a few summers. Now, you know our Tuck, everything always came so easy to him so, of course, he'd already mastered treading water. But you were having a lot more trouble getting a hang of it. You always had to fight tooth and nail to keep up with that boy. One afternoon, I brought you two over here to swim. Sometimes I'd swim with you, but that day I thought I'd just watch from the deck and keep an eye on you. I should have known better!" Grandma Hazel laughed loudly.

"You two had been swimming for a while and Tuck wanted to show me how he could tread water, so he came on over to the deep end. I think you must have been a little distracted watching him and feeling jealous that you couldn't do it, too, because the next thing I knew, you'd slipped right over the steep edge and into the deep end as well. And boy did that scare you. If you'd kept your head, I think you could've doggy paddled over to the side. But you were panicked and started flailing around, trying to keep your head above the water. Tuck, of course, would've done anything to help you. He swam right over to you and tried to help pull you over to the side, but you were so scared you just tried to grab onto him and pulled him under with you! I knew there was nothing for it. If I didn't drag you both out of there, and quick, you were going to kill the both of you. So I slipped off my shoes, jumped in, and pulled you both over to the side. My goodness, were you upset! As soon as you climbed out you told me, 'Grandma, I am never going swimming again!' Oh, that was fine. I told you, you should do what you thought was best. But Tuck was still swimming and if there was one thing you couldn't stand, it was being left behind. Sure enough, five minutes later, I heard a splash, turned around, and you were back in the water! My brave little Paige."

Paige's heart swelled. Not with pride for her own courage, but with adoration. Adoration for the woman who thought nothing of jumping into a pool fully clothed to save her. Paige looked at her Grandma and knew she hadn't rescued her that day so she could live a life of fear and denial. She needed to be brave, like she had been when she was eight. She didn't want to be left behind. Paige promised herself she was going to make her Grandma proud. (Though, of course, she already had.)


	14. Multitudes

By mid July, the mural was really starting to come together. The wall in the dining room looked like it was exploding with flowers. Emily and Charlie had spent days drawing and painting every kind they could think of—roses, tulips, marigolds, orchids, petunias, lilies, mums, daisies, sunflowers, daffodils, hydrangeas—just to name a few.

Hanna, Spencer, and Aria had helped do some of the painting. Aria had liked it most. She had painted three of the larger than life flowers by herself during the evening they had spent on the mural. Spencer painted one while regaling them all with interesting facts about bees and pollination. Hanna had painted one and then grown bored and declared herself DJ. She spent the rest of the time looking through her iPod and playing one song after another, usually with personalized dedications for each song going out to one of the girls. Emily took the opportunity to sit back and really look at the mural while her friends painted for the night.

She always found it difficult to see things like that objectively when she was in the middle of them. She decided, as she watched her friends, that it was turning out even better than she had hoped and figured that she and Charlie could have the mural finished by end of the month if they wanted.

* * *

 

After the girls' two-week visit, Emily felt more subdued. Charlie's exuberance from early in the summer had given way to an even keeled happiness. When they worked, they were quieter, but would often work later into the night than they had in June and with greater care. Emily loved this about she and Charlie's friendship; they could exist as comfortably in silence as they could in boisterous laughter. She cherished those quiet evenings, with nothing but the sound of their brushes against the wall and the ceiling fan gently swaying and making a light knocking noise above them as it spun.

It was during one of those peaceful nights, when Charlie was just starting to paint the pair of horses in the top right corner of the wall, that she looked down at Emily from the chair she was standing on and said, "I don't think you've ever told me your coming out story."

"Really?" Emily asked. "I thought I had."

This was actually a lie. Emily knew perfectly well that she hadn't told Charlie her coming out story. The truth was while everyone knew she was gay, hardly anyone knew her coming out story. She always felt so awkward when she told it, like telling it cheapened the experience somehow. Heterosexuals weren't forced to tell the story of their sexual awakening like it was some epic tale or a mystery that needed to be solved. Without meaning to, Emily began to feel anger seeping into her bloodstream.

"I know it's personal. And probably painful. You don't have to tell me if you don't want to," Charlie said, reminding Emily that this was one of her best fiends and she had no reason to get so defensive. Charlie just wanted to know more about who Emily was.

"Charlotte, I'm sorry, of course I'll tell you," Emily said, apologizing for something that Charlie didn't even know had happened. She took a few moments to collect her thoughts and then began.

"When I was a sophomore in high school, well, that was when I sort of got serious about writing. So I joined the school newspaper. I had a boyfriend at the time. I was definitely in denial about who I was. Anyway, one of the photogs on the newspaper staff, her name was Lindsay Green. She was a senior and she was so gorgeous, but also like, a little dangerous, I guess. She had tattoos and smoked cigarettes and she was very artsy. She developed her own photographs in the darkroom that the journalism department shared with the art department. Very swoon worthy to a 16 year old me."

"So, on Wednesday nights we did this worknight thing where all the journalism kids would stay after school and work on the paper until 8 or 9 at night. It was a few months into the school year, I think. Our advisor, Mrs. James, she asked me to go to the darkroom to check with Lindsay about some prints she was working on and ask if she was going to some event that night to take more pictures. I can't remember exactly. So I did, and when I walked in, I caught Lindsay making out with one of the other seniors, Haley, she was one of the yearbook editors, actually. God, I was so embarrassed when they looked up and saw me, I just ran out, grabbed my stuff and went home. The next day, I told Mrs. James I'd gotten sick and had to leave."

"And that's when you realized you liked girls?" Charlie asked.

"Not exactly," Emily continued. "I guess I developed a crush on Lindsay. I don't know what else to call it. But like, a terrified crush," Emily laughed. "I mean I would go out of my way to avoid being alone with her. I faked sick to get out of doing stories and going on assignments with her. But I broke up with my boyfriend and I would stare at her in class all the time. Anyway, she figured it out, why I was acting like that, before I did, probably."

"On another one of those Wednesday nights, she cornered me on the way to the bathroom and told me that she knew why I had been acting weird since I walked in on her and Haley and it was because it had turned me on. I sort of half-heartedly denied it and she told me to meet her in the darkroom in an hour and prove it."

"This chick sounds saucy, I like her," Charlie commented. "So did you do it? Did you meet her in the darkroom?"

"Of course, I did. I had no idea what she was going to do, but I knew I had to find out," Emily went on. "So I went to the darkroom and she was there, looking sexy as ever, and she basically implied that if I wasn't gay I could kiss her and it would be no big deal. And that it would prove I hadn't felt anything."

"I wasn't stupid. I knew what she was doing, but I also  _did_ want to kiss her and I didn't want to look like a chicken, so I walked up to her and kissed her right on the mouth. When I pulled back she was all, 'Well?' and I told her to shut the fuck up and I kissed her again. We kept kissing and ended up making out for an hour or so. And after that I pretty much knew. It just felt right. Like I should've been kissing women my entire life. I came out to my parents the next year. They weren't thrilled about it, but it wasn't horrible. They obviously still loved me. We all adjusted."

"Did you and Lindsay date?" Charlie asked curiously.

"No, we never dated. But we snuck into the darkroom to do… _stuff_ almost every Wednesday night. But she graduated that year and we didn't really keep in touch. We were both only interested in each other physically, I think. No. I didn't have my first real girlfriend until I was senior."

"Wow. Innocent little Emily, only in it for the sex?" Charlie joked with her.

"Hey now," Emily shot back, "isn't that what  _most_ of your relationships are about?"

"Ouch!" Charlie laughed and flicked some paint at Emily.

"You're going to regret that, Charlotte," Emily said reaching for her brush.

* * *

 

It was the last full day of Paige's summer vacation. Grandma Hazel had called her the day before to make sure she'd be coming over to say goodbye and also mentioned that she had something for her granddaughter.

When Paige arrived, she walked in without knocking. Her grandparents, and now just her grandma, had lived in this house for nearly 50 years. Paige had spent as much time in it as she had her own and to be completely honest, she felt more at home in her Grandma's house. It was her favorite place in the world, despite the strange colors it had always been painted—an abrasive, rusty sort of barn red with peach trim and teal shutters. It definitely stood out among the other houses on the street. The place was two stories tall with two bedrooms downstairs and one big bedroom upstairs that was her Grandma Hazel's room. She and Tuck had always slept downstairs when they stayed over.

"Grandma?" Paige called out as she walked in.

"Back here!" Hazel called out from the kitchen. Paige went through the living room and into the kitchen. The house had a formal dining room, but it also had what her grandparents called The Breakfast Room, which was attached to the kitchen and had a large table, television, and desk in it, with large windows that look out on the huge backyard. It was where they had most of their meals and it was where Grandma Hazel spent most of her time. She was sitting at the table now, and Paige could see the crossword puzzle from today's paper, the cordless house phone, a deck of playing cards, and a few books in stack spread out on the surface.

"What'll you have, dear?" Hazel asked. "I made some of your favorites this morning," she said grabbing a tin from the kitchen and opening it to reveal chocolate chip cookies stacked with pieces of waxed paper between the layers.

"Thanks, Grandma," Paige said smiling and taking the tin to the table where she sat down.

"Milk?" Hazel asked.

"Yes, please," Paige replied to the woman who had taught her manners in the first place.

Hazel came back to the table with two tall glasses of milk and sat down with Paige. She grabbed a couple cookies, too, and the two munched happily for a few minutes before Hazel said, "I was going through some of your grandfather's things last week and I found a couple of books I think he'd like you to have."

"Really?" Paige asked. Tuck was definitely the more literary of the two.

"Well, after what you told me on the 4th, I knew it was important for you to have them," Hazel told her. "I think they'll help."

"Okay," Paige relented, wiping her chocolatey hands on a napkin so she could take the books her grandma was handing to her. Paige looked at them. The first was  _Leaves of Grass_ by Walt Whitman and the other was a small volume of e.e. cummings' collected poetry.

"Grandpa Frank liked poetry?" Paige asked. "I didn't remember that."

"He did," Hazel continued, "but it was always a bit of a solitary pursuit for him. Not many people knew that about him. He'd read these especially when he had a big decision to make or when he was sad. When he lost his brothers all those years ago, he spent a lot of time reading these. He said to me once—'Hazel, a good poem is like a north star. It always points you home.'"

Paige flipped through the books and saw that Grandpa Frank had underlined things here and there and even noticed his whip-like scrawl in a few of the margins.

"Thank you, Grandma," Paige said earnestly. "I'll read them."

"You're welcome, dearheart. You know, you were a lot like your Grandpa in many ways. Stubborn and foolhardy sometimes, but more determined than anyone I've ever known. When he first started his route," Hazel said, referring to Grandpa Frank's job as a postman for 30 years, "he got lost a few times. So after church on Sundays, for a whole year, he'd drive to different parts of the city, park the car, and walk them til he knew this whole town like blood knows the veins. That's why whenever one of the other postmen was sick, they'd call Frank to pick up his route, because he knew the whole city better than anyone. He never got lost again after that first year. But sometimes, the way he talked, it almost seemed like he missed it—those little adventures he'd go on. It's okay to be lost for a while," she told Paige. "It can even be fun. Make friends with the unknown. Have some adventures."

As she finished, Paige wondered if anyone but grandparents could get away with saying such wise yet cliché things.

* * *

 

On the plane the next day, heading back to Stanford, Paige spent a long time reading the Whitman. The bit she liked most had a few lines her Grandpa had underlined in green ink—

 _Do I contradict myself?_  
Very well then I contradict myself.  
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The quote that ends this chapter is from section 51 of Walt Whitman's Song of Myself.


	15. Fall Again

August seemed to pass by in the blink of an eye for Paige once classes and swimming practice had started back up at Stanford. She felt herself struggling, now that she was no longer at home, to not slip back into old habits. She didn't feel the need to say 'yes' when David asked her out after practice one day, but she did find herself nodding along and agreeing whenever one of her teammates would point out a guy they thought was cute. Paige knew it was stupid. There were two gay girls on the swim team already, but she was terrified that her teammates would suddenly become uncomfortable around her or avoid her in the locker room if they discovered she was attracted to a woman.

That's still where Paige was at—sure she was attracted to Emily, but not sure about much else. Her mind seemed to need to accept this revelation one tiny piece at a time. She still didn't feel sure if she was gay or just attracted to Emily. But she  _wanted_ to find out, and that made all the difference.

The problem was, she felt like she wanted to figure things out _with_  Emily. And Emily, of course, was 2000 miles away and probably never wanted to see her again after what Paige had said to her outside that frat party at Vallance.

More and more frequently as September started to pass, Paige found herself daydreaming about Emily instead of paying attention in class. She wanted to go back to Vallance and visit Tuck. She felt every fiber in her being telling her it was the next step in this journey Paige had embarked on. Being back in California away from her family made her feel completely stuck again. She started wishing she had not decided to attend a university so far away from everyone she loved. But whenever that thought came in to her mind, she brushed it away. She couldn't afford to think like that. She'd made her bed (or, in this case, picked her college) and now she had to lie in it.

In mid-September she decided she couldn't ignore the feeling anymore; she could at least visit Vallance. On top of wanting to see Emily again, she and Tuck would be turning 21 on October 11th and she desperately wanted to spend it  _with_ Tuck. It didn't seem right to celebrate such a monumental birthday apart. They obviously needed to get shit faced  _together._ She talked to her coach and teachers and cleared the longer than normal visit with them that she was hoping to take and then called her parents to see if they would buy the tickets for her as an early birthday present.

* * *

 

Emily and Charlie had waited for Jo and Eden to return to finish the last bits of the mural. It only seemed right for each of the people living in the house to contribute. Even Tuck spent an evening putting the finishing touches on the background, which they were filling in with a forest green.

It really was beautiful when it was finished. The words were centered, but at an angle, in the loose but thick letters Emily had fashioned. Then there were the flowers; erupting from the ends of the letters themselves and the air around it, spilling out, like a pot boiling over. At least 50 enormous buds of all different flowers cascaded around and down from the words and poured over the barbed wire fence that ran along the bottom of the mural.

The flowers were the majority of the mural, but up in the right corner, as if far away, Charlie had added in some tree trunks, whose tops would exist somewhere just above where the mural topped out. Standing in the midst of the trees were two horses.

It was odd. Emily was so proud of the mural. So truly in love with how beautifully it had turned out. But almost as soon as they had finished, Emily pictured herself, two years into the future, having to paint over it all. She knew, somehow, that it would be the last thing to go. The last thing Emily would do before she moved out would be to paint over it all. And the thought made her so sad that she had to excuse herself for a moment and fight the feeling down so it wouldn't overwhelm her.

Classes started up again at the very beginning of September. Tuck and Emily were in a class together, Intro to Film, so he came over to the house a few nights a week to watch movies they'd been assigned or just hangout with Emily and the other girls and do homework.

It was one such night. They had just finished watching Hitchcock's  _Rear Window_  and were just starting on the other homework they both had.

"Seriously, the worst decision of my life," Tuck said pulling out his Astronomy textbook. "I don't think I can even do any plays or dances this term because this damn class is taking up so much of my time."

"It can't be that bad," Emily said. "It's just stars and planets and stuff."

"You have no idea," Tuck told her opening the book. "I thought it was going to be fun. I could learn about the galaxy and phases of the moon. But its much more math heavy than you would think. And the professor is such a condescending asshole.  _Every single class_  he makes it a point to be all 'Okay, here's a question for the Physics majors.' Like the rest of us are too stupid to answer."

Emily made a mental note to never, ever take Astronomy just as Tuck's phone started ringing.

"Saved by the bell," Emily laughed as Tuck gleefully threw his book aside, grabbed his phone off the coffee table and answered it.

"Paigey! Thank god you called," Tuck said answering.

Emily couldn't deny that one of the perks of having Tuck as a friend now was the little updates and things she got to hear about Paige's life, like when she would win a swim meet or ace a test. She didn't want to still care about Paige after what happened, but Emily couldn't help feeling a little proud of her and happy whenever she got wind of those small triumphs in Paige's life.

"Yeah, I'm good," Tuck was saying, "just hanging out with Em. We just watched a movie for class."

Tuck paused and Emily could tell he was listening to his sister.

"Okay, shoot," Tuck responded and then fell silent again. This time he was quiet for much longer, but as he listened his eyes lit up and a huge smile broke across his face.

"Are you serious?!" he said excitedly. "Holy shit! This is going to be the best birthday ever."

Another pause, and then Tuck said, "I'll figure something out, okay? I can't wait to see you!"

As he said this last thing, Emily's stomach dropped. Paige was coming to visit. Emily would be seeing her again, and it sounded like soon because she knew Tuck's birthday was early next month. She felt like she might vomit. While she enjoyed Paige existing in her life peripherally, the thought of standing in the same room with the gorgeous swimmer made Emily uneasy. She was still embarrassed about The Incident and also ridiculously attracted to Paige. She was apprehensively excited, she decided. It was all very confusing.

Tuck hung up the phone soon after that. "Paige is coming to visit for a whole week!" he announced grinning like an idiot. Then he saw the sort of queasy smile Emily was attempting to return to him and said, as he sat back down on the couch, "Oh god, that's probably sort of a mixed bag for you, huh?"

"No, Tuck, it's fine," Emily said, composing herself. For all she knew, she wouldn't even be seeing Paige when she was here. "I'm sure the girls and I can do without you for a week. I'll still see you in class."

Tuck looked at her nervously for a moment before saying, "Actually, I kind of wanted to run an idea by you…"

"What?" Emily said tentatively, stretching the word out more than she normally would.

"Just hear me out," Tuck prefaced his suggestion. "I live in a dorm with a bunch of other guys and not much spare room. All we have is that hard, disgusting, school-issued couch in the suite. And while I don't mind subjecting Paige to that for a weekend…I feel like it would be cruel and unusual punishment to make her sleep on it for an entire week. I'll also have to be in class sometimes and we aren't aloud to make copies of our dorm keys…"

Emily just stared at him. She was going to make him actually say it.

"Well, it would be really nice if Paige could stay somewhere a little homier, maybe with some other ladies around that she could hang out with when I'm busy…"

"Did you have somewhere in mind, Theodore?" Emily asked him, pretending to be oblivious to what he was suggesting.

"Here?" he said in a very meek tone with a hopeful yet apologetic smile on his face.

Emily deflated at the prospect. "Tuck, I don't know. I really doubt Paige would even want to sleep anywhere near me."

"Listen, I know it's hard to believe, but Paige has changed a lot. Over the summer she seemed to…I don't know. It's hard to explain. She just, she's not lying to herself anymore. She's the Paige I remember from when we were kids. I think she's trying to figure her sexuality out. I can't promise it won't be awkward, but I know it won't be, well, like it was last time."

Emily's mind flashed back to the Dickinson poem— _If you were coming in the fall._ Paige seemed destined to creep up on her. She wished, half-heartedly, that she had more time to prepare. For what, exactly, she didn't know.

"Okay," she relented in a dull tone, "but I'll have to run it by the girls."

"You are a fucking angel, you know that?" Tuck said, enveloping her in a bone-crushing hug.


	16. An Overwhelming Welcome

Paige couldn't believe her luck when Tuck told her that he had arranged for her to stay  _in_ Emily's house with her and her friends when she visited. It only confirmed for her that this was what she was supposed to be doing. It felt good to be moving forward and toward something again. She was nervous about seeing Emily, but it was an excited nervousness. Paige spent the next three weeks working extra hard in all her classes to get ahead to compensate for the week she would be missing.

By the time the day finally came for her to leave she could barely sit still and she hardly got any sleep the night before. She had once again packed the purple Vallance sweatshirt from her first meeting with Emily. She wanted Emily to remember  _that_ Paige, which she had spoken so openly about love with, and not the one who had cowardly pushed her away. Maybe seeing Paige in the sweatshirt again would remind her. Paige also took  _Leaves of Grass_  with her, which she had been reading religiously each night until she could quote some of the passages. She honest-to-god loved the book, but she also thought being able to quote Whitman might impress Emily, who, Paige remembered from their first conversation, wrote poetry herself.

* * *

 

Tuck met her at the train station again. As this was her third visit now, Paige was starting to get a feel for where things were in town. It was nice to not feel quite so helpless in Solomon.

"Nice sweatshirt," Tuck said in greeting, referring to the Vallance sweatshirt Paige had pulled on when she got off the plane in chilly Chicago. "Maybe you should just transfer here." He wrapped her in a tight hug.

"Fat chance," Paige quipped back. "Do you even have a swimming pool here?"

Tuck looked genuinely puzzled and said, "I have no idea. I'll have to ask Emily."

"Why would Emily know?" Paige asked, secretly pleased that her name had come up so quickly. It felt good just having the other girl's name on her tongue.

"Oh, she works at the fitness center," Tuck explained. "If we do have a pool, it'll probably be somewhere around there, don't you think?"

"Yeah, I'd think so," Paige chuckled, a little baffled that Tuck really didn't know. It was kind of hard to hide a swimming pool.

"You really want to swim while you're here?" Tuck asked.

"It would be helpful if I could at least do a little training while I'm here," Paige answered.

They had been walking as they talked and were a couple blocks away from the train station by now.

"Yeah, let's just ask Emily," Tuck said again.

The twins chatted as they walked, but only half of Paige's brain was listening. The other half was trying to remain calm as she became increasingly more nervous the closer she got to seeing Emily once more.

* * *

 

In the basement at The Log, Emily was faring much worse. She was standing in only her underwear amid an enormous pile of clothes she had put on only to take back off again and toss aside. Tuck had sent her a text 5 minutes ago saying that he and Paige were on their way over. At that point, Emily's nervousness had escalated to a full blown panic.

"Jo!" Emily yelled at the top of her lungs. Almost immediately, she heard a body making its way toward the basement door above her.

Jo came down the stairs, took one look at her and said, "You're not even dressed yet? They're almost here!"

"Help," Emily said pitifully.

Jo scanned the floor quickly, picked up a pair of light wash jeans, and then said, "Where's that black and grey sort of plaid looking v-neck shirt you have? You look good in that…" The two scanned the floor, and tossed aside some items to see what was under them, until, finally, Jo located it under a frumpy sundress. Just as she handed it to Emily, they heard the front door open. Both girls looked up at the ceiling towards the sound.

"Shit," Emily said, her eyes wide.

"Put these on and come upstairs. And Jesus, Emily, pull yourself together," Jo told her moving back up the stairs.

Emily took her time pulling the clothes on, checked herself in the mirror, and took several deep, steadying breaths. She couldn't even process the idea of socks or shoes in her frenzied state, so she just headed upstairs barefoot.

* * *

 

Paige, for her part, had not realized, until Tuck turned up the walkway to The Log, that she didn't actually know where Emily lived. But as she looked up at the house, her mind flashed back to her first visit and the black-haired girl she'd seen going into this house. It had been Emily, Paige realized.

"She lives in the ugly house?" Paige hissed at Tuck. "Why didn't you tell me?"

Tuck shot her a look that clearly said – DO NOT BE RUDE – before he opened the door a little and called out, "Ladies, we're here!"

As they walked in, Charlie came bounding into the entryway, dragging Eden with her, whose arms she had just forcibly linked on their way to the door.

"You must be Paige," Charlie said smiling and sticking out her hand for Paige to shake. "I'm Charlie, and this," Charlie motioned to Eden who she was still linked arms with, "is my lovely wife, Eden. Welcome to our home!"

"She's joking, obviously, and annoying," Eden said trying, and failing, to free herself from Charlie's arm. "But I am Eden. Hi! Why don't you bring your stuff in the living room?"

From the entryway, Paige could see straight back through hallway that led to the dining room and the kitchen. The stairs were to her left and the doorway to the living room was to her right.

"Okay, sure," Paige said turning with Tuck into the living room, seeing Jo appear from behind a corner in the kitchen as she did.

Paige and Tuck threw her bags down next to the couch and sat down. Jo appeared in the doorway, and raised her right hand to give a small wave of greeting.

"Hey Paige, I'm Jo," she said simply, then as an afterthought, "Emily will be up in a minute her…uh…closet broke."

"So, how was your trip?" Eden asked Paige genuinely.

"Well, its always pretty exhausting, but I crashed on the train for a few hours, so I feel pretty good now," Paige responded. Everyone seemed really nice, but meeting so many new people at once was still overwhelming.

"You better be," Tuck told her excitedly, "because we are going out tonight, just you and me, to buy a drink at midnight!"

"Oh yeah, Happy Birthday, almost," Charlie said. "Now that I see you side by side, I can really see the twin thing. Totally the same shoulders."

Emily walked in the living room at that moment and everyone fell silent. Without exactly meaning to, Paige stood up. They both stared at each other for what felt like about five hours but was actually only five seconds.

"Hey, Em," Paige said carefully. "How've you been?"

Emily had been ready to be polite but also detached. Self-preservation usually won out for her in situations like these. But then Paige had called her "Em," and her heart leapt and her stomach dropped and she knew it was no use. She smiled sweetly at the other girl.

"I've been good, Paige. How about you?"

"I've been working through some stuff," Paige responded cryptically, "but I can't complain."

They fell silent again and Emily could feel everyone else's eyes glancing back and forth between she and Paige.

"Somebody grab a knife," Charlie suddenly said, "cuz we gotta cut this tension."

Paige blushed as Eden smacked Charlie across the arm. "You are tactless," she mumbled almost inaudibly, then said, "I almost forgot! I'll go get your welcome basket!"

Paige's eyebrow arched slightly as Eden ran out of the room. Tuck grabbed the back of Paige's sweatshirt and tugged her back down to the couch. Jo sat down, too, noticing Paige's face and said, "No, she's not kidding. "

Emily was still staring at Paige hungrily. She needed to get a hold of herself. Luckily, Eden burst back in the room clutching a wicker basket, which at least gave Emily as a reason to be looking at Paige so intently.

"Welcome to The Monologue Cabin!" Eden announced, thrusting the basket toward Paige, who took it tentatively.

"Wow, thank you," Paige said, glancing around at the items inside.

"We got you a Vallance water bottle, because you'll probably be needing it while you're here. A pen and notepad with the school crest on it," Eden was pointing to each item as she said this. "Here's a map of the campus and another one of the town. This is your key, on a Vallance keychain, of course, which is yours to keep when you leave. And this is a list of all our phone numbers in case you need anything."

Paige couldn't believe all this. She'd never been welcomed anywhere like this, not even by her own family, except her grandparents.

"Seriously," Jo said, "you can call any of us if you need anything, or if Tuck is at class or something, or you get lost.

"And help yourself to anything in the kitchen," Charlie added. "Eden and I baked a bunch of stuff this morning and went to the store."

"We asked Tuck what kind of food you like," Emily told her, "so hopefully you'll be able to find whatever you need."

Paige looked around at them all and ran her hand back through her hair. She was actually welling up from their kindness. It wasn't something she had expected, at all.

Tuck looked over at Paige and could tell what was going through her mind. He had been similarly floored by how friendly and open these girls had been with him on that first Sunday he had spent with the quartet. He put his hand on Paige's shoulder, squeezed it gently, and smiled at her.

"This is incredible," Paige said looking around the room at them all. "You didn't need to do all this just for me. Thank you."

Then Paige had an idea.

"I was just going to take Tuck out to dinner, but after this, I'd really like to take all of you. As a thank you for letting me crash here for a week."

"Well, I won't say no to that," Charlie replied, "though, we should probably got to Marcelo's, that's the pizza parlor, or you'll be out like 200 bucks."

"True," Jo agreed. "We're big eaters."

"Deal," Paige said laughing.

Paige looked up at Emily and was shocked by the amount of love she could see pouring out of the girl, not for Paige, but for her friends, as Emily looked around at them all, beaming.


	17. Midnight Snack

After the six of them had dinner, Emily and the girls headed back to The Log and Paige and Tuck went to go drink before going to the bar to buy their first legal drinks at midnight. Emily thought it was silly that they were both so excited at this prospect since they'd obviously both had alcohol before.

"Yes, but now, we can't get arrested for it," Tuck said as he and Paige walked off together towards his dorm.

Back at the house, the other three girls opened some bottles of Smirnoff Ice and decided to play Apples to Apples. Emily played with them and had a good time, but refused to drink anything. She was worried that what happened the last time she was drunk around Paige might happen again. Her body had been buzzing all night already just being near the girl again. She didn't trust herself to even be tipsy and keep her hands to herself when Paige made it back to The Log.

Everyone went to bed around 1 am, Emily making sure to leave the living room lamp on for Paige. It was only about an hour later, though, lying in her bed and trying to sleep, that Emily heard the front door open and close again. Paige sounded a little unsteady on her feet, but Emily didn't think she sounded drunk enough to need assistance. She'd obviously made it home okay. She heard Paige move into the kitchen and begin opening and closing the cabinets and fridge. It sounded like  _every single cabinet._  Emily giggled as she imagined a drunken Paige looking through the kitchen. Her laughing was cut short, though, when she heard the basement door open.

Paige was framed in the doorway, in silhouette from the light of the kitchen behind her. Emily watched from her bed as Paige made her way slowly down the first few steps. Then, she stopped and dug into her pocket. Emily wasn't sure what she was doing until Paige's face was suddenly lit up by her phone. Paige tapped the screen a few times and then put the phone up to her ear.

 _Why is she calling someone from my bedroom stairs?"_ Emily wondered. Then Emily's phone lit up and started buzzing. She sat up and grabbed her phone. It was an unfamiliar number but Emily could guess who it was.  _Why am I even answering?_ Emily thought as she pressed accept and put the phone to her ear.

"Paige?" Emily answered.

"Emily," Paige whispered. Emily could hear her through phone and standing on the stairs. "It's me, Paige."

"I know," Emily said, unable to stop herself from smiling at Paige's drunkenness. "I can see you on the stairs. Why are you calling me?"

"Because I can't see anything," Paige said, "and I didn't know if you were awake. Are you awake?"

Drunk Paige was pretty adorable, Emily had to admit.

"I am awake," Emily responded. "What's up, Paige?"

"Do you have a toaster?" Paige whispered into her phone. "I couldn't find one."

Emily had been attracted to Paige from the first time she saw her. She had felt a connection with her that first night. But it was in this moment, in this whispered phone call from 20 feet apart, that Emily developed a real, potentially life-altering, crush on Paige McCullers. In that moment, everything deepened for Emily.

"I'm going to hang up," she whispered to Paige. "Stay there, I'm coming to get you."

Emily hung up and set her phone aside.

"Okay," she heard Paige say after she'd already ended the call. "I'll wait for you here."

"I already hung up, Paige," Emily told her in a normal volume.

"Oh, sorry," Paige replied, still whispering. "I'm drunk."

Emily almost loved her, in that moment right there. Almost.

She made her way over to and up the stairs. Paige couldn't see her until they were almost face-to-face.

"Hi!" Paige finally said at a normal volume. "Your room is so dark."

"I know. It makes it really hard to get up in the morning," Emily told her as she gently turned Paige around with a hand on her hip.

"I would stub my toes a lot if I lived down there," Paige told her as she started climbing the stairs.

Emily laughed. "I try to keep things off the floor."

The brightness of the kitchen took some adjusting to once they were back upstairs. When her eyes had adjusted, Emily looked around at all the things Paige had pulled out and put on the counter.

"Jeez, hungry much?" Emily asked, bending down to one of the lower cabinets and pushing aside a large soup pot. The toaster was wedged in behind it. Unless Jo was on one of her Eggo waffle kicks, it didn't get used much.

Emily hadn't thought about it, but she was sort of scantily clad. Her pajamas consisted of some small plaid shorts and a loose teal tank top that matched them. When she turned around, though, Paige was staring at her, her brown eyes traveling up and down Emily's tan skin. Emily cleared her throat, but the alcohol seemed to have disengaged the part of Paige's brain that picked up on subtlety. She simply continued raking Emily's body up and down with her eyes, and, Emily noticed, she even licked her lips a little. Emily had to stop this now or she was going to throw herself at Paige.

"Here's the toaster," Emily said loudly. Paige finally snapped out of it, but not seeming to be embarrassed in the slightest. Emily could see what Tuck meant about how she'd changed.

In fact, as Paige took the toaster from Emily, she actually said, "I like your pajama body. It's good."

Emily felt all the blood from her entire body rush straight down to her core. At least, that's what it felt like. She gulped and moved away quickly.

"So," she said, eager to change the subject, "did you and Tuck have fun?"

"We had a great time! Tuck took me to this place called McGillacuddy's. He thought I'd like it because McGillacuddy is Lucy's maiden name in  _I Love Lucy._ And she uses it sometimes, you know, when she's auditioning or doing something Ricky doesn't want her to do," Paige explained chuckling, as she filled a pot with water and put it on the stove to boil. "I got this drink there, it's called The Pink Pussy. Oh. My. God. It was so delicious."

 _She is actually trying to kill me,_ Emily thought, grabbing the counter behind her for support. Hearing Paige say the word "pussy" had caught her off guard, and had sent her mind to very dirty places. She imagined what it would sound like if Paige were whispering the word into her ear while telling her all the things she wanted to do to her. Emily was becoming ridiculously turned on.

Paige seemed unaware of the effect she was having on Emily. She was now deftly cracking eggs into a bowl using just one hand and tossing the shells into the sink. For a drunk person, her cooking skills were amazing. As Emily watched, she grabbed a whisk and the bottle of olive oil.

"What are you making?" Emily asked her curiously.

'Eggs Benedict," Paige replied, like it was no big deal. The most sophisticated dish Emily had mastered was a pasta dish her mother had taught her to cook, but she still had to look at the recipe when she made it. Paige seemed to operating on mixture of habit, instinct and legitimate knowledge.

"Are you serious? Isn't that kind of hard?"

"Naaaaah," Paige slurred. "You want some?"

"Yeah, sure," Emily said. She was interested to see if Paige could pull this off being as drunk as she was.

"Is there any ham?" Paige asked. By now she was whisking while drizzling olive oil into the bowl. Her movements were a little sloppy, but they got the job done.

"Hollandaise!" she shouted as she finished the sauce. "Here, taste," she said, dipping her finger into it, and catching Emily, who had been turning around from the fridge with a packet of lunch meat clutched in her hands, unawares.

Paige slipped her finger into Emily's mouth and, on instinct, Emily closed her eyes and sucked the sauce from her pointer finger. Paige let out a small whimper. The two of them locked eyes as Paige slowly removed her finger from Emily's mouth. It was clear, on her face, that in her drunken state, Paige hadn't considered how sexual doing that might be. Somehow, Emily maintained her poker face.

"It's good," Emily said in a low voice. And then, "You're boiling."

Paige seemed frozen on the spot, though. Her body did feel very hot, but how would Emily know that, Paige wondered.

"What?" she croaked.

"The water," Emily said, motioning to the pot on the stove, "it's boiling."

"Oh, right!" Paige said, finally turning away from Emily.

They didn't talk much as Paige poached four eggs. She asked Emily to put the English muffins in the toaster for her. They both seemed to be doing everything they could to pretend Paige's finger hadn't just been sucked clean in Emily's warm mouth.

When the Eggs Benedict was ready, they sat down at the dining room table together to eat. Paige was about to take her first bite when she glanced up and saw the mural for the first time. She had only been as far as the living room before dinner and then it was dark when she came back, and she was drunk. Paige set her fork down and stood up.

"Wow," she said as she ran fingertips lightly over the mural. Paige was one of those people who wanted to touch everything when she visited the art museum. It was just how she experienced things best; seeing didn't suffice for her.

"Did you do this?" she asked Emily.

"Some of it. Charlie and I made it over the summer."

Emily watched as Paige read the poetry on the wall and then stepped back to take in the mural in its entirety.

"I bet this is what your soul looks like," she said to Emily, referring to the poetry. "That's what it means, right? Stepping out of the body."

It was the most wonderful compliment Emily had ever received.

"Paige…" was all she could manage to respond, though.

"I really like it," Paige told her, returning to her chair and digging into her food.

"Thank you," Emily told her as she watched her and began eating, too.

She took the first bite and it was so good that she moaned out loud.

"Oh my god. Where did you learn how to cook like this?" Emily asked as she took her next bite.

"My grandma," Paige replied. "She's seriously the best cook ever. She used to work at this fancy restaurant in Philly when she was younger. She and my grandpa pretty much raised Tuck and me growing up. I mean, by the time we were 10 we had the skill set of an elderly couple. We could cook, garden, play cribbage, crochet…"

"Wait," Emily said, "you crochet?"

"Yeah!" Paige responded. "You want me to make you a scarf? What house are you in?"

"What?" Emily asked, not daring to believe her ears. If Paige liked Harry Potter, she really would be the whole package. She also had this sexy, confident, drunk thing going on that Emily was finding hard to ignore.

"You're a Ravenclaw, aren't you?" Paige said, eyeing her shrewdly. "I'll make you a scarf."

"I'm a Hufflepuff, actually" Emily corrected Paige, a little shyly, as she swooned inwardly. "I love to read, but I'm lousy at math and science. I'm definitely more of an artsy type."

"Oh damn," Paige said staring at Emily, "coming out of left field with the badger. I'm a Gryffindor, through and through."

Having finished eating, Paige leaned back in her chair with her hands behind her head and the smarmiest look her face. Emily burst out laughing.

"Yep, you're definitely cocky enough to be a Gryffindor," she said smoothly.

"You know you like it, Fields," Paige volleyed back.

"Since when do you know my last name?" Emily interjected.

"Since today," Paige said, pulling a folded piece of paper from her pocket. "It's on my phone list." She waved the paper around for a moment and then put it on the table.

"You're right," Emily said.

"About what?" Paige asked, forgetting what she's said a few moments ago.

"I have a thing for cocky girls. I do like it," Emily said biting her lower lip slightly as she looked Paige up and down. Then she stood up to take her empty plate back into the kitchen.

It was a good thing, too, that Emily walked away, because Paige was blushing so hard she felt like she might die of a heat stroke. But she also felt like she could fly. She was so happy. Emily Fields was flirting with her. Emily didn't hate her after what happened last spring. Paige still had a chance. Not all was lost.


	18. Surprise Pong

When Emily woke up on Saturday morning, she told herself that she needed to do a better job of keeping her distance from Paige. Flirting with her last night had been dangerous. Paige had made it clear last spring that Emily's advances were not welcome and while Paige may very well have had a change of heart, Emily was still wary of reading the signals wrong again. She wasn't going to look like a fool twice. Emily promised herself that she would treat Paige as a friend and nothing more.

"Hopefully, Paige won't feel the need to stick her finger in my mouth today," Emily said out loud while she was getting dressed.

Upstairs, the house was pretty quiet. The girls usually slept late on the weekends and it was only 9 am. Eden was usually the earliest riser among them and she rarely got up before 9:30 on Saturday and Sunday. Emily could hear soft voices coming from the living room, though. She walked down the hall, thinking maybe Tuck was over already, not wanting to waste any valuable birthday time with Paige. But as Emily neared the living room, it became clear that it was only Paige's voice speaking. Emily realized she must be on the phone.

"Yeah, I'm staying with Tuck's friend, Emily. Well, I guess she's my friend, too," Paige was saying.

Emily knew she shouldn't eaves drop but the sound of her own name made it nearly impossible to walk away.

"She's the one I told you about," Paige spoke again. "You'd like her. She's a real spit-fire, just like you!" Paige laughed at that.  _Who is she talking to?_ Emily wondered. "Of course not! No one could ever replace you."

There was silence again and then Paige said, "He's supposed to be over in about an hour so I should probably go get ready. Thank you for the birthday call. I love you, Grandma. Go wake up Tuck now!" She laughed again, and Emily moved away back to the kitchen so that Paige wouldn't catch her listening.

Emily's heart had melted a little and she felt her previous resolve about Paige weakening. The girl had been so sweet on the phone just now. Emily's brain was in overdrive, trying to figure out what the hell it could mean that Paige had told her Grandma about her. She had definitely been staring at Emily's body last night, too.  _Maybe she has changed her mind about me,_ Emily thought. She was so distracted by these thoughts that when Paige put a hand on her shoulder, she jumped and the cereal from the box she was holding shot in the air and fell onto the floor. Emily spun around quickly with an embarrassed smile on her face.

"Hi," Paige laughed. "Sorry. I didn't mean to scare you."

"Hey. Good morning," Emily stuttered out. "You didn't scare me."

"So, you meant to throw cereal all over the floor?"

"The weather report called for showers of Frosted Flakes," Emily shrugged, immediately regretting the lame joke. She made a noise halfway between a chuckle and groan.

Paige laughed and, spotting the broom hanging on the wall by the pantry, grabbed it and began to sweep up the cereal.

"You're really cute when you're nervous," Paige told her, smiling widely. Now that she was sure she still had a chance with Emily, Paige had no qualms about flirting with her.

Emily grinned, her heart speeding up, but looked away and cleared her throat.

"You're up early," she said to Page as she successfully poured some Frosted Flakes into a bowl.

"My grandma called to wish me a Happy Birthday," Paige explained. "But I'm glad, Tuck's going to be over soon anyway. I think he's borrowing a car from someone so we can drive around town and go see a movie or something before we party with you guys later."

"Oh yeah, Happy Birthday!" Emily told her enthusiastically. "Stay right there!"

Emily took off down the stairs and reappeared just a few seconds later.

"Here," she said, handing a blue envelope to Paige with her name written on the front. Paige noticed she had another one that said "Tuck" still clutched in her hands.

Inside was a card in which Emily had written, "Happy 21st! Hope you have a great week while you're here. Fondly, Emily."

Emily had a very hard time figuring out how to sign off when she'd written the card. She thought "Fondly" sounded cold and stilted, but she hadn't been able to come up with anything better. She couldn't very well sign it "Wish you were gay, Emily."

"Thank you," Paige told her. "You guys are like the nicest people ever here. Kinda makes me wish I hadn't gone to Stanford."

"What do you mean?" Emily asked. "You haven't met any nice people at Stanford?"

"I have, its just such a big school. I feel swallowed up by it. And, like I told you when we first met, I'm not the best at making friends," Paige explained. "Seeing you with your friends, seeing how close you all are, it's kind of amazing. I've never had friends like that."

"Well, I count myself lucky," Emily told Paige honestly. "Those girls are my family. Do you want some cereal?" she asked then.

"No, I hate cereal," Paige responded. "I'll just make some toast."

"Do you need me to find the toaster for you again?" Emily teased. She couldn't help but flirt with Paige a little, not when Paige was so obviously flirting with her.

Paige blushed. "Okay, I deserve that. But tell me that wasn't the best Eggs Benedict you've ever had," Paige challenged her.

"It was really good," Emily conceded. "I especially like the hollandaise…" They locked eyes and Emily moved toward Paige a few steps. Paige was just opening her mouth to say something when Eden walked into the kitchen.

"Happy Birthday!" she said and promptly began singing Happy Birthday to Paige while handing her another card.

Paige and Emily didn't get another chance to talk by themselves again during the day. Soon Charlie and Jo were up, too (probably woken by Eden bellowing out every birthday themed song she knew), and the house was buzzing with plans for that night and what they should do to celebrate the twins' birthday. Then Tuck showed up and chatted with them for awhile before he and Paige headed out for the day.

* * *

 

Emily spent her time getting her homework for the weekend out of the way so she could party that night without having it hanging over her head. Then she went to the liquor store with Jo, who had turned 21 over the summer, to buy all the alcohol they would need for the night.

It had been decided that to begin the evening's birthday celebrations, they would play Surprise Pong at The Log. Surprise Pong was like Beer Pong but with hard alcohol and mixed drinks in the cups instead of beer. It gave Charlie a chance to make up new mixed drinks and it was also just fun to guess what you were consuming. It also got them drunker than when they used beer. Charlie had thought of Surprise Pong one night when Eden complained about how much she hated the taste of beer. After that first night, everyone agree it was far superior to Beer Pong.

Tuck and Paige returned from the movie around 7 pm with their cheeks flushed.

"I had to return the car across campus and then we walked back here. It's getting chilly out there," Tuck explained, rubbing his arms a little.

Emily was looking at Paige, though, as she removed her leather jacket. She couldn't help but wonder if Paige would look similarly flushed after a good, hard fuck.  _You're not even drunk yet!_ Emily scolded herself immediately after the thought entered her mind.

"Should we eat something before we start playing?" Jo asked everyone as they joined she and Charlie, who were setting up the Surprise Pong game, in the kitchen.

"Why don't we just have some snacks while we play?" Emily suggested. She was feeling eager to start drinking so she would at lest have an excuse for shamelessly flirting with Paige and imaging her in various stages of undress.

She had mostly given up on trying to be nothing more than friendly to the other girl. She had never felt more drawn to someone and if Paige was changing her tune, Emily was more than happy to sing along.

"I call first game!" Emily announced. "Who wants to play me?"

"I'll play you," Paige said from the doorway. "I've never played before, though, so you'll have to give me a quick run down."

"It's simple," Tuck said. "You just stand at the end of table, shoot a ping pong ball and try to get it into one of the other person's cups. If you make it, they drink the cup and take it off the table. Whoever clears all the other person's cups first, wins."

"Alright!" Paige said, bouncing up and down and shaking her hands out like she was about to play a game of basketball or something more athletic than pong. "Let's do this, Fields. Bring it on!"

"It's cute, you actually think you have a chance," Emily taunted, giving Paige a pitying smile.

"Oh, Tuck forgot a couple things," Jo said. "If you make a shot, you get to keep going until you miss. You can also yell or do whatever you want to distract the other person while they're shooting. Except for flashing. That was outlawed after Charlie broke the light cover last winter."

Paige took the first shot and missed pretty badly, probably because she was now imaging Emily flashing her from the other side of the table.

"That's okay. That's okay. Shake it off," Tuck told her. "It was your first go. You got this, Paigey!"

Emily lined up on the other side of the table. She sunk her first shot. Paige drank. Then Emily made her second shot, as well.

"Yeah, Em, wipe the smile off her face!" Charlie shouted, throwing a fist into the air.

Everyone had gathered around the table to watch now. She and Eden were sipping on some drinks on the same side of the table.

"Kill her, Em!" Eden yelled, as Emily sunk her third shot. Eden was vicious in any kind of competition.

Emily smiled smugly as Paige threw back her third cup.

"I forgot to tell you," she said, her voice thick with gloating, as Paige put the cup aside. "No one has ever beaten me at pong."

Paige shook her head, but she was smiling. "Damn. I'm in trouble, aren't I?"

Emily missed the next shot and Paige finally landed one. As much as she wanted to win, Emily also wanted to drink, so she didn't mind.

Paige ended up putting up a better fight than Emily thought she would, but she still won by four cups. By the time the game was over, Paige was feeling sufficiently buzzed. Emily wanted to catch up, so she stepped away from the table and poured herself one of the drinks Charlie had mixed (Licorice Knuckles, she'd named it). She took a long swig of it, and thought she caught a taste of peppermint schnapps.

"Taking your loss pretty hard, huh?" Paige asked coming over.

"Excuse me?" Emily said, both of her eyebrows rising. "I wiped the floor with you!"

"Only because I let you win," Paige said, leaning casually against the counter. "You look really pretty tonight, by the way," she added taking a sip of her own drink.

"Paige McCullers, are you flirting with me?" Emily asked, expecting a snarky or sarcastic comment in response.

"Yes, I am," Paige responded, looking hard at Emily.

"Well," Emily said, a knot tightening low in her stomach at the look Paige was giving her, "glad we have that cleared up."

Emily's heart was beating wildly. She was afraid to move or even breathe. She didn't want to fuck this moment up somehow. The two drank in silence for a few minutes. Tuck and Jo were playing pong now, and Eden had pulled Charlie over to the open area near the stove. They were dancing together some music Jo had put on earlier. Charlie was spinning Eden around and around until she almost fell over, but Charlie caught her and hoisted her back to her feet, both of them in stitches of laughter.

Paige and Emily watched them, laughing a little as well. Then Paige scooted closer to Emily and leaned into her ear. "Are they together?" she asked obviously referring to Eden and Charlie.

Emily turned around, Paige doing the same and facing the counter, so they could talk without the others overhearing them. "No," Emily said, "they're not together. They're just in love."

"What?" Paige took the opportunity to lean closer to Emily again. She liked the response she got, hearing Emily's breath hitch slightly. "What does that even mean?"

They were so close to each other by this point that their shoulders were touching. Paige was leaning forward slightly, her forearms resting on the counter. Emily leaned forward to match Paige's position and began to run her fingers very lightly, tentatively, over the top of Paige's hand, which was palm down, as she spoke.

"Well, none of us really talk about it," Emily said in low voice. "I mean, we're all close, but it's different for Charlie and Eden. Like, Eden's the only person who can take care of Charlie when she's sick. And Eden loses it whenever Charlie gets drunk and wanders off because she's so worried about her. And Charlie goes to see Eden every time she performs. Not just like she sees all her plays, but like, every single performance. She's there every night the show runs. I think they have more conversations with their eyes than the rest of us have with our mouths."

It was strange to say it, but this was the most intimate moment Paige had ever experienced—here, leaning over the counter together with Emily who was speaking softly and tracing the curves of her hand.

"Are they sleeping together?" Paige asked, daring to slowly turn her hand over so it was now palm up. She gulped audibly as Emily continued to run her fingers along Paige's open palm.

"I don't know," Emily told her. "Does it matter?"

"Um…yes?" Paige answered, struggling to concentrate on their conversation.

Emily was quiet for a few moments. She seemed to be lost in the lines on Paige's palm as she traced them one by one and then slowly trailed her fingertips up to her wrist and forearm. Paige let out an audible sigh then, which Emily could have sworn she heard her own name in.

"Why?" Emily said, and went on without giving Paige a chance to answer. "Don't you think the scope of human relationships is stupidly limiting? They can be in love and have sex or they can be in love and not have sex. I mean, it's like that cliché saying—Eskimos have 20 different words for snow—or something like that. "

"You lost me with the Eskimo bit," Paige told her, raising her hand slightly and slowly moving it against Emily's, sliding her fingers back and forth between her own. They weren't holding hands. It was more akin to fucking with the constant motion of it. It baffled Paige that something so simple could feel so erotic. She was getting wet from this slow movement of their hands against each other.

"I'm just saying, whatever relationship that Charlie and Eden have, there isn't a name for it. And there doesn't need to be. You just want to label it for your own comfort. So you can understand it. I don't mean  _you Paige_. Everyone does it. We have a natural desire to understand and catalogue everything in the world. But a lot of things, I think, they don't fit into our understanding. Maybe our brains are too small. I mean, love is kind of baffling even in defined relationships. It rarely makes sense. But we can still accept things even if we don't understand them."

"You get really philosophical when you drink," Paige told her, trying to keep her cool, even though she was breathing heavily at this point.

"You get really nosey," Emily said, her voice dripping with want. She realized she needed to stop this or she was going to kiss Paige in front of everyone. And she didn't want to do that. She wanted Paige to come to her this time.

"We should get back over there," she said, pressing her palm flat against Paige's for just a moment, and then moving back towards the pong table.


	19. On the Catwalk

A couple hours later, Emily was still unbeaten at Surprise Pong, but Paige had also managed to win her first game as well. Tuck had challenged Paige to a game and Emily had acted as her coach, coming to stand behind her to fix her stance or point out where she should be aiming; basically, using any excuse to touch her. The best parts of the game, in Emily's opinion, was the cocky grin Paige got on her face every time she made a shot and the hug she gave Emily when she sank the last shot to win.

"Maybe you should coach me in some other areas," Paige said suggestively to Emily. "I take direction really well, don't you think?"

"The things I can do, Paige," Emily said with a sly smile, "they can't be taught."

It was a relief, Emily thought, just to be able to flirt with Paige. Even if it was all that ever happened between them, at least she could feel Paige pushing back against her, even if it was just with her words. In many ways, it was even more satisfying than dancing with the Paige at the frat party. Emily felt that easing into it this way was better; she didn't want to push too hard and scare Paige off again.

* * *

 

A couple hours later, Charlie demanded more substantial food, so the six of them wandered into town and picked up some Chinese food to go. Rather than just take it back home to eat it, Eden had the idea that they should take it to the main stage at the Lincoln Center, since nothing was being performed this weekend, and eat there.

"Are you sure this is okay?" Jo asked as they all walked into the empty theater and Charlie went back to the booth to turn on the lights. "It feels like we're breaking into a church."

"Come on, Jo, we have keys for a reason!" Eden shouted as she ran down to the stage and bounded up the stairs.

"Yeah, but I'm pretty sure this is not that reason," Jo countered.

"Don't worry so much, it'll be fine," Emily told her. "The worst thing that'll happen is we'll get kicked out by one of the janitors."

Charlie emerged and looked down at Eden, who was happily reclining center stage and had started to eat.

"Those better not be my motherfucking egg rolls, Edie! Goddamit!"

Eden screamed as Charlie sprinted toward the stage. She took off running somewhere backstage, closely pursued by Charlie. Jo couldn't help but laugh at their antics and relax. Tuck, Paige, Emily and Jo settled themselves on the stage, pulled out all the food, and happily dug in. The other two eventually reappeared and joined them.

Emily didn't feel especially hungry. Her nerves were causing her stomach to churn. She did her best to eat a few of the Crab Rangoon she had ordered and then offered the rest to Charlie to replace her missing eggs rolls. Then, Emily had an idea.

"Hey, do you guys want to go up on the grid?" she directed the question at Tuck and Paige since the other three went up there quite frequently. Jo hung the lights for most of the main stage productions and often enlisted the rest of them to help. "I'll give you a little behind the scenes action," she said waggling her eyebrows at the twins.

"No, thank you, there's a reason I prefer to be  _on_ the stage," Tuck said emphatically, shaking his head. Then he clarified, " _I_   _do not do heights._ "

"Well, he does heights, he just usually pukes," Paige laughed. "I'm up for it, though," she added looking at Emily and smiling.

"Great!" Emily said, her pulse quickening as she became even more excited at the prospect of some alone time with Paige. "Can I borrow your keys?" she asked Jo as she stood up.

Jo tossed her the keys and she and Paige moved off stage left into the dark backstage of the large theater.

"Don't fall!" Charlie shouted at their retreating backs.

"So, how drunk are you?" Emily asked Paige. "It is a little dangerous. I mean, I've always thought it would be kind of poetic to die on your birthday, but I think 21 is a little too young."

"You are kind of an odd duck, Emily Fields," Paige chuckled. "I'm only like a three, though. Drunk enough to make me bolder than normal, not enough to make me wobbly. I think that beef and broccoli soaked up some of the alcohol in my system."

"Perfect," Emily grinned, feeling like a kid on Christmas morning.

The two had reached an area that was caged off, literally, with a metal, crosshatched box that was as large as a dorm room. Paige could see a work area with light gels, wires, ropes, and what appeared to be small spotlights stacked on some shelves. The cage also encased the bottom of a towering spiral staircase that reached up into the high, dark ceiling. Paige couldn't help feel a little nervous as Emily unlocked the large padlock attached to the cage's door and then followed her as they began to ascend the tightly wound turns of the staircase. At the top, Paige leaned over the railing to take in just how high up they were and gulped.

"You okay?" Emily questioned, putting her hand of top of Paige's.

The truth was, the height wasn't what was making Paige nervous, it was the beautiful girl stroking Paige's hand gently with her thumb. Paige glanced down at their two hands and let out a long, steadying breath before looking back up at Emily. She nodded in answer to Emily's question.

"Be brave, Paige," Emily whispered and pulled her gently by the hand onto the narrow walkway that led away from the stairs into the black, exposed ceiling of the building. It was dark, but not pitch black. There was a chink of light coming from a source further along the walkway, and Paige and Emily began making their way towards it, moving in the direction of the back of the theater, away from the stage. The walkway they were on looked like it continued the length the whole auditorium. Emily confirmed this.

"If we kept walking that way, we would come out in the booth," Emily explained. "You know, where the big control board is for the lights and sound. That's where the stage manager sits to call the show."

"You mean where they give all the cues and stuff, into that headset?" Paige asked, her mind heralding back to some things she had learned in her 8th grade Communications class. She was genuinely fascinated being up here, seeing the bowels of the theater exposed like this and getting to see how it all worked.

"Exactly," Emily told her, smiling. "But we are going this way," she nodded to the walkway to their left. It was different from the one they were on because they were moving into the drop ceiling of the auditorium now and the curved white of its material swooped away from the walkway on either side. It looked like rolling hills of snow underneath an inky sky, which was the true, unfinished ceiling of the building. This walkway was slightly curved, and its end was hidden from view by the bend. Paige noticed, as they moved along this walkway, that there was a about a foot gap running along its bottom on their left. She looked down and could see directly into the theater below. They were situated, it seemed, a ways back from the stage, slightly ahead of the middle of the seats for the audience. Paige could see Tuck and others were still lounging on the stage, laughing and talking.

"This is where we hang the lights," Emily explained, "on the pole here." She pointed to a long, black pole that was running along horizontally with the base of the walkway.

"This is really cool," Paige said, kneeling down so she could see out of the gap by their feet a little better.

Emily smiled at her and leaned against the railing, facing out into one of the sides where the ceiling seemed to run on forever, a dim valley rolling away into the darkness. "It's one of my favorite places on campus," she said. "It feels like a different world up here. Even when rehearsal is going on, it's still quiet up here, like it's a million miles away."

Paige stood up then. She knew this was it, the most private, isolated moment she could have hoped for. Time was hanging around them like a mirage. She felt like she had stepped into a frozen snow globe. Paige steeled herself and moved behind Emily, placing her arms on either side of the other girl, gripping the railing, but maintaining an inch or so of space between their bodies.

Emily made to turn around and face Paige, but Paige pressed her body flush against her to stop the movement.

"I need to say something to you," Paige told her, her breath moving against Emily's ear. "But I don't think I can get it out if you're looking at me."

"Okay," Emily told her simply, aware of every bit of her body that Paige was pressing against with her own. She could feel Paige's heart pounding steadily against her left shoulder blade. Emily's hand tightened around the railing until her knuckles were white. Surely, she thought, this kind of prolonged anxiety must have far reaching effects.

She heard Paige let out a long breath and then a small cough. She was clearly nervous, too. Emily waited quietly for Paige to speak, but there was an emotional storm raging in every inch of her body. Emily focused on her eyes blinking, the slight flex of her jaw, her toes balling inside of her Converse: the impossibility of stillness when it came to Paige.

"Emily, I'm so sorry," Paige began slowly, her voice heavy, "for the way I acted last spring at the frat party. It's just…being around you…it made me feel out of control. Like a runaway train, or like a car with the breaks cut. I was so scared. I felt like, if I didn't stop what was happening that I was gonna crash."

Emily felt Paige shake her head slightly behind her, catching Emily's hair in the air that was stirred by it. She seemed to be wrestling with herself, to go on, so Emily kept her silent yet charged vigil.

"You weren't crazy that night," Paige suddenly exhaled the statement, all at once in a rushed whisper. "I was…I  _am_ …attracted to you. I've been trying to figure out everything since then. I'm still not sure if I'm gay…or, if I am, I can't quite say it out loud yet. But I did want to kiss you that night. I still do."

Emily had her eyes closed. She wanted to drown in this moment and never die. She was using all her self control now to not spin around, because all she wanted to do was turn and pin Paige against the other railing and kiss her breathless.

Instead of that, she said, very quietly, "Can I turn around now?"

"Yeah," Paige muttered and eased her body off of Emily's slightly so she could turn. Paige left her hands where they were, though.

When Emily was facing Paige, who seemed on the verge of hyperventilating, she said, "I'm sorry, too. I never should have walked off and left you there. I should have been more understanding. I'm not the most patient person. And for the record, you can kiss me whenever you want."

They had been looking each other right in the eyes as Emily said this last part. Paige smiled, relief cascading over every inch of her body and pouring off of the catwalk into the seats far below them.

"Okay," she said quietly, momentarily paralyzed by the enormous weight that had left her. "Okay," she said again, but this time, louder and in a more sure tone. When she looked back up, she could see in Emily's eyes, seductive black holes that they were, that she was waiting for Paige to make the first move.

Paige bit her bottom lip as she glanced down at Emily's lips and then she moved her right hand to brush a strand of Emily's hair behind her ear. After that, Paige gently cupped the side of Emily's head in her hand, leaned in, and kissed her.

Paige had never experienced anything like it. It felt like the sun rising in the morning or leaves falling from the trees in autumn. It was just so natural and so right. Her entire body hummed with the perfection of it as her lips moved languidly against Emily's, and a bit of the contented hum escaped her lips and slipped into Emily's eager mouth.

In Emily's case, she was already familiar with the rightness of it, which she had felt the first time she had kissed a girl. But she had never been kissed by anyone the way Paige was kissing her now. It was so sweet and so honest. It was the first time someone had kissed her for the pure joy of kissing her and not because they wanted the kiss to lead to other things. Paige took her breath away. And as they kissed, Emily's hands roamed over Paige's back and up into her hair. She could feel Paige smiling into the kiss, and Emily pictured the two of them, inexplicably, as if they were standing between two huge bookends, as tall as the girls themselves.

When Paige pulled away, she ran her finger over Emily's wet, smiling lips and Emily kissed her fingers.

"Please, don't stop," Emily told her as she wrapped both arms around Paige's neck and pulled her back in, sliding her tongue into Paige's mouth as their lips met again.

They kissed for as long as they dared up on the catwalk, high above the seats they had first met in a year ago, protected from everything and everyone by the bookends in Emily's mind.


	20. Inside the Actors Studio

On Sunday, Paige woke up on the couch to smell of pancakes cooking and voices filtering through the air from the kitchen. She smiled, a huge grin, before she opened her eyes, remembering what had happened the night before. Her 21st had definitely been her favorite birthday so far.

When she walked into the kitchen, she saw Emily sitting on the counter, still in her pajamas, and Eden minding the pancakes on the stove. They were both sipping cups of coffee. Emily's face lit up when she saw Paige walk in.

"Hi," she said, her face breaking into a soft smile. "How'd you sleep?"

"Good," Paige told her. "Really good. I just realized, though, I haven't showered in two days. Are there towels somewhere I could use?"

"Oh, god, yeah. Sorry! We should have showed you that stuff as soon as you got here. You can use some of mine," Emily said putting her coffee down and hopping off the counter. Paige couldn't help but notice she didn't seem to be wearing a bra. She followed Emily into the bathroom feeling suddenly sheepish and slightly aroused.

No one had warned her about this strange no-man's land that existed between the first kiss and the second and Paige had no idea how to navigate this space between intimacies. Should she kiss Emily? Should she say something about last night? Suddenly, all the surety she felt coursing through her body last night, all the confidence she had fallen asleep with, had been replaced with doubt, insecurities, and questions. Her brain started to spin wild thoughts one after the other.

_What if I wasn't a good kisser?_

_What if Emily doesn't want to kiss me again?_

_What is she's wishing it never happened?_

They had entered the bathroom now and Emily was saying something.

"—are mine, so feel free to use those and if you didn't bring shampoo or you forgot something," she pulled back the shower curtain, "everything in the left corner is mine. But I'm sure Jo wouldn't mind if you used her stuff. So really, just go crazy," Emily finished, laughing a little at her last statement. She turned to look at Paige and saw her frozen in the doorway with a stiff expression, like she was afraid to get close to her.

"Paige, are you alright?" she asked, worried.

"Yeah, I just really need a shower, ya know? " Paige said, crossing her arms over her chest. "I'm gonna grab a change of clothes," she muttered and moved quickly towards the living room.

Emily was left alone in the bathroom, the shower curtain still clutched in her right hand. Her face fell as she watched Paige practically run out of the room, wondering if Paige was reneging after what happened between them. Paige was like some skittish wild animal that was spooked any time Emily made a sudden movement. As she walked back to the kitchen, Emily remembered something her father had told her once, when he was teaching her how to shoot a gun.

"You're a great shot, Emmy," he'd told her proudly, "but you wouldn't be much of a hunter."

The statement had confused her when he'd said it, but she was starting to understand what he meant.

A few minutes later, after grabbing her clothes, Paige shut herself in the bathroom and sat down on the closed toilet, silently berating herself. Why had no one ever bothered to tell her it took more courage to kiss someone the second time than it did the first?

* * *

 

The day went by slowly. Paige left with Tuck soon after her shower. The twins went to a coffee shop and then wandered around the quaint shops that lined Main Street. For lunch they got hot dogs from a lonely food cart. And in the afternoon, they happened upon a tour that was about to begin for one of the old churches that was right off of the town square and decided to check it out.

Although Paige had not been attending church regularly once she started at Stanford, she still had a deep love of church buildings. When she and Tuck were growing up, her father would sometimes do a pulpit exchange with other churches around Pennsylvania. This meant he would switch churches with another pastor for one Sunday to preach and lead services. She and Tuck would take the opportunity to thoroughly explore the churches they visited. Those hours had been some of Paige's favorite times—finding strange doors and staircases, forgotten choir lofts, and dark nurseries filled with ancient toys. Once, they'd even climbed a ladder hidden in a small closet and found themselves in the stone bell tower of a particularly large church.

It was lucky that they happened on the tour and that the tour guide encouraged everyone to look around the building on their own after the guided portion was over. It gave Paige a direct route back to herself, to something sure and true about her identity. Wandering around the church with Tuck by her side felt so safe and so familiar that she wondered how she could have been in such a tailspin over Emily only that morning.  _This is what it must mean to center yourself,_ Paige thought, having never quite understood the term before.

She and Tuck were wandering around the church basement, looking at some intricate tapestries that depicted the Stations of the Cross, when Paige cleared her throat.

"So, I kissed Emily last night," she said nonchalantly, and then added, "a lot," just for good measure.

"I knew it!" Tuck shouted, then clapped his hand over his mouth, remembering where they were. "Charlie owes me 20 bucks," he said quietly but smugly.

"You took bets on us?" Paige said incredulously. "Well, thanks for the vote of confidence, I guess. Charlie didn't think I'd do it?" she asked.

"Actually, Charlie bet that you were going to fuck on the cat walk," Tuck said laughing. Then glanced back over at Paige with a slightly worried look on his face. "Wait, you didn't, right?"

"No! What is wrong with you?"

"Sorry," Tuck said. "Just checking. But you kissed her? How was it?"

"It was…"Paige stopped walking in her search for the words to describe what it felt like to kiss Emily. She couldn't contain the smile on her face. "It was the most perfect thing that's ever happened to me."

"Oh my god, Paigey," Tuck said. "I've never seen you like this before! I mean, look at you. You're giddy!"

Paige was blushing hard and looking down at the ground.

"I really like her, Tuck. Like more than just kissing her." She looked up and then shook her head in frustration. "God, why isn't there a grown-up word for 'crush?'"

Tuck was grinning as widely as Paige was now. "I'm so proud of you," he told her.

"Thanks," Paige responded.

* * *

 

When they got back to The Log, all four girls were in the living room. They were talking loudly, except for Emily, who seemed to be the only one still eating dinner. She was clutching a bowl of soup and sitting cross-legged on the couch. Paige tried to catch her eye, but she was either lost in thought, or purposefully avoiding Paige, and didn't even look up when she and Tuck came in the room and everyone else greeted them.

"Where have you two been all day?" Jo asked.

Tuck gave the girls a quick rundown of their day and then Eden regaled them with an update on the mime show she and two other students were putting together. Still, Emily didn't look up from her soup.

"So what should we do tonight?" Charlie asked the group at large. "Besides drink."

"Don't you think you drink a little too often, Charlotte?" Eden asked her in a scolding tone.

"Probably, but I'm not going to worry about that tonight. Now, somebody think of something for us to do. I'm bored!"

"You're like a toddler, sometimes," Eden told her. Then her eyebrows shot up with an idea. "Ooooh! Em, can we play Inside the Actors Studio?"

"Yeah! Come on, Emily, please?" Jo added and soon as Eden made the suggestion.

Charlie was literally bouncing up and down on the couch, just chanting, "Please! Please! Please!"

Whatever this game was, it seemed to hinge entirely on Emily's assent to its taking place. This piqued Paige's interest in it automatically. It had also, finally, pulled Emily out of her soup reverie, which Paige also appreciated.

"No, guys, come on. It's so embarrassing," Emily said. "Not when we have guests." Her eyes were pleading with her friends to just drop it, but none of them cooperated.

"But it's the most fun game ever!" Charlie insisted. "Tuck and Paige will love it!"

"Okay, one of you needs to tell us what's going on," Tuck said loudly.

"Inside the Actors Studio is a show on…Bravo, I think," Jo began to explain. "But it's also this game that Emily made up, based on the show. The show is basically just this guy, his name's James Lipton, and he has famous actors into the Actors Studio to interview them about their life and acting career. But he's really ridiculous, the way he talks to them. He's like kissing their ass but with complete reverence. He just has this weird air. You gotta watch it sometime. Anyway, Em does a great James Lipton, and she interviews each of us like we're famous actors and we have to drink every time she makes us break character and laugh. It's so much fun. You're going to love it. "

"No, they're not," Emily interrupted, "because I'm not going to do it."

Finally, Paige caught Emily's eyes. She tried to apologize telepathically for being weird that morning. And she might have succeeded because Emily suddenly let out a huff amid the protests that had erupted from her friends' mouths.

"FINE. Someone get the chairs and the drinks. I need to change," Emily relented.

"Yay!" Charlie shouted as Emily left the room. "You two get the chairs," she said to Jo and Eden, who both looked elated, "and I'll get the drinks."

When Jo and Eden came back they were carrying two of the chairs from the dining room, which they positioned in front of the TV, angled towards each other slightly.

"What exactly did Em go to change into?" Paige asked.

"Her costume," Eden said, as if it were obvious.

"Just wait, you'll see," Jo told her grinning.

A few minutes later, Charlie came in with a pitcher of something she had just mixed up and a stack of plastic cups. "The Alabaster Albatross," she said, naming the new drink as she set it down.

In the distance, they heard the basement door open and shut. "She's coming," Eden whispered excitedly.

A few seconds later, Emily walked back into the room. Until that moment, Paige had no idea exactly how hot a woman in men's clothing could be. Emily had put on a blue, stiff collared, button-up shirt with a black tie, black pants, and matching black suit coat. All of it fit her very nicely. None of it was baggy on her, but it wasn't too tight either. Paige wondered where on earth she had purchased the outfit. She also had on thick, square-rimmed glasses and she'd tied her hair back into a tight bun.

The moment she walked into the room, the air changed. Emily was completely in character. She had adopted a stiffer posture and was looking at them all appraisingly. The other girls quieted down immediately and took their seats on the sectional.

"Welcome," Emily said in a low, haughty tone, "to The Actors Studio. For those of you who are joining us for the first time tonight, the rules are simple. If at any point you laugh or answer any of my questions with anything but the respect that I, James Lipton, am due, you must drink. I will interview each of you in turn. Just follow my lead. Shall we begin?"

Paige, who knew she would do  _anything_  Emily told her to do while wearing that suit, saw that the other girls had raised their glasses along with Emily. Paige and Tuck quickly grabbed cups of their own.

"We always begin with a toast to me, James Lipton: National Treasure, Eternal Interviewer, and Seer of All Movies."

Paige had to stifle a snort. Emily was really committing to this.

"To James Lipton," they all chorused and drank.

"Now," Emily said, sitting down on one of the dining room chairs and pulling a thick stack of note cards from her breast pocket, "let's begin with the truly incomparable, dream weaver herself, Ms. Charlotte Cole."

Charlie stood up solemnly and approached the other dining room chair while Jo and Eden applauded. As she sat down, she said, "James, it is so nice to see you again."

"Charlotte, please, the pleasure is all mine," Emily responded, placing her hand over her heart and shaking her head. "You've starred in three television shows, 14 made-for-TV movies, and won five Oscars. You are the only woman to ever win an Oscar for a movie that appeared on the Hallmark Channel. Your talent is beyond anything mere mortals have experienced ever before or ever will again. Tell me, what was it that drove you to write your tell all memoir,  _Sexting Myself?"_

"Oh, James," Charlie said, fighting back a smile. "I would have to say it was two things. The first, of course, being my lifelong battle with sexual frustration. The second being my unlikely friendship with Oprah. Her guidance really brought me to a place of honesty and masturbation."

Both Jo and Paige had laughed at that, but Eden just rolled her eyes. Tuck looked slightly uncomfortable, but took a large swig of his drink. Emily maintained her composure completely.

"Ah yes, that calls to mind the one woman show you filmed for HBO:  _Every Day an Orgasm._ Tell me, are you _ever_ satisfied?" Emily was rolling now.

"I am, but it usually takes 10 orgasms, James," Charlie looked like she was thoroughly enjoying herself now.

"I'm sure, by now, we've all seen the iconic images of you and Oprah riding horseback on the beach, naked," Emily transitioned before Charlie could say anything too revealing.

"Those were breathtaking, weren't they?" Charlie threw in.

"I wept," Emily said simply, and Paige saw Charlie struggling to not laugh. "Some thought it was unwise when Oprah gave you your own reality show on OWN. What was that called again?" Emily asked, flipping through her note cards, though Paige was almost sure they were blank.

"Um…"Charlie seemed to not be as good as Emily was at thinking things up on the spot. " _Life-Size Cardboard Cut Out_."

Emily didn't miss a beat. "Six episodes. Six hours of undiluted genius. Some have heralded you as the most destructive force since the Plague swept Europe…" Emily began but that was it for Charlie. She burst out laughing and slumped over in her chair.

Paige was completely enamored with this Emily. She knew she was witnessing a side of the girl that only the people closest to her ever got to see. And Paige was so turned on by the sight of Emily in the suit, that she couldn't help but muse on how amazing Emily would be at role-playing.

It went on like this, Emily interviewed each of them as James Lipton until everyone was tipsy and giggling and breaking character more and more frequently as Emily came up with increasingly ridiculous fictional lives for them all. It wasn't just the things Emily was saying; it was how she said it all so very seriously and how she was dressed and the faces she was making as she spoke. She had the whole room eating out of the palm of her hand and everyone was in stitches. And the whole time, Emily's façade never broke.

At last, Emily called Paige up to the hot seat.

"Paige Darlene McCullers," she said, cocking her eyebrow as she stared Paige down. "Please, join me."

Paige almost laughed just from hearing the middle name Emily had made up for her, but she fought it back.

"Paige, you are legendary in Hollywood. Rumor after rumor has spread as to what your true origins are. Were you born from two human parents, or do you have, as legend has it, other-worldly origins?" Emily asked.

"The rumors are true, James," Paige said dramatically. "I was born to a man and woman, but not on this planet. We came here, as I'm sure you've guessed from my middle name, because my parents were such big fans of the show  _Roseanne._ "

"Fascinating," Emily said, straightening her glasses, "though, not surprising. I'm sure you've also heard the rumors that you are, in fact, the illegitimate love-child of Roseanne Barr and Steven Tyler?"

Paige let out a bark of laughter and then took a long drink of some Alabaster Albatross, which seemed to be Charlie's take on a White Russian, and which Paige was enjoying immensely.

"Oh my, James. No comment there," Paige replied.

"A mystery that, perhaps, will never be solved," Emily said solemnly, and went on. "You were, of course, classically trained on the stage before breaking into Hollywood. You stared as Elphaba in the revival of  _Wicked_ on Broadway. Tell me, what was that experience like?"

"It was, in a word, bizarre. No one before me had ever dared to stage a revival of a show when its original run hadn't even ended yet. It was a terrible idea," Paige said, and she thought she saw Emily's lip twitch slightly.

"You are a trailblazer in every sense of the word. Always thinking outside the box. After Broadway, you were cast in your first movie role. Tell us about that," Emily prompted.

"How could I ever forget the role that shaped who I have become today?" Paige said, stalling. She searched her mind for any theater or movie knowledge she possessed, looking for something she could use to make Emily laugh. Then she thought of something, something sort of stupid, but that she thought might work.

"That role was as Batman in Tim Burton's genre defying hybrid of the classic DC comic and Neil Simon's well known play, which of course, Burton aptly named  _Bat-foot in the Park,"_ Paige really sold the delivery of the title, spreading her hands, fingers splayed dramatically, across the air in front of her face.

It worked. It was just a small snort of laughter, and Emily's lips pressed together more tightly than before, but everyone heard it and everyone was staring at Emily now, open-mouthed.

"Oh my god," Eden said in a hushed tone, "James Lipton broke!"

"Does that mean I win?" Paige asked.

"That depends," Emily said in her normal voice again. "What do you want for your prize?"

Paige couldn't help but look over at her suggestively. Emily, in that suit, was driving her crazy.

"Oh, that reminds me," Tuck said, watching the two of them, "you owe me 20 bucks, Charlie."

"WHAT?" Charlie shouted. "You guys made out?" She turned to Paige and Emily.

"Wait...you took bets on my love life?!" Emily shouted angrily, then her eyes shot open wide in horror as she realized she had just said the word "love." Her head dropped into her hands. She was sure Paige would freak out like she had that morning in the bathroom.

"Why didn't you tell us?" Eden was saying, oblivious to Emily's panic.

"We didn't plan on taking bets, Em," Jo said, apparently the one who had picked up on Emily's distress. "We were all rooting for you. I mean…"

Everyone seemed to be talking at once, in a confused jumble. Emily stood up, looked like she was going to say something, but then her eyes fell on Paige, and she just turned on her heel and stormed out of the room with a mortified look on her face.

"Why does it always end like this when we play Inside the Actors Studio?" Eden wondered aloud.


	21. Morning Workout

Paige didn't know what she should do. She stood up and was struck by the fact that she hardly knew Emily at all. Did Emily like to be followed and consoled when she was upset or left alone to cool down? Paige turned helplessly to the group.

"Should I go after her?" she asked them all.

"You can try," Jo told her sympathetically, "but she usually locks her door."

Paige quickly moved through the house to the basement door. She tried the handle, jiggling it several times, but it was locked.

Eden was lecturing everyone in the other room. "What is wrong with all of you?!" Paige could hear her saying.

She knocked on the door. "Em? It's not a big deal, okay? I mean…I'm sorry if you didn't want anyone to know." For a moment, Paige wondered why Emily hadn't told her friends, but pushed the thought aside when she concluded it was probably due to her own actions that morning. "I didn't know Tuck was going to do that. Please, Emily, can we talk?"

Paige leaned her forehead against the door. She couldn't hear anything. No footsteps on the stairs. Emily wasn't going to open the door anytime soon.

Jo came into the kitchen about 15 minutes later and found Paige sitting on the floor, with her back resting against Emily's door.

"Come on," Jo said, offering Paige a hand up. "She's probably just embarrassed. We'll all apologize tomorrow and everything will be fine. "

Paige walked out of the kitchen with her and said good night to Tuck and the girls. Then she put on her pajamas, made up her bed on the couch, and climbed into it with her copy of  _Leaves of Grass._ She wasn't tired. She was too worried about Emily.

* * *

 

Down on her bed in the basement, Emily was moping. She hadn't really cried, but a few angry tears had rolled down her cheeks once she had reached the solitude of her room. She'd spent the entire day worrying about Paige's obvious discomfort that morning, scared that Paige was pulling away again. And then Paige had come back to The Log acting like nothing was wrong and being her cute, alluring self while Emily was forced into acting like a total moron during that game. Then Paige had made her laugh and she'd broken character. Of course Paige had made her laugh. Emily always felt like she was coming apart around the girl.

And now further humiliation.

Emily knew she was probably overreacting, but she couldn't bring herself to care or act more mature. She was tired of this endless wait, wondering when Paige would next land.

Emily pulled her copy of Emily Dickinson off the bookshelf, but not to read it. She just lay down in bed and held the volume against her chest. She needed a friend. It was only a few minutes, however, before Emily's phone started ringing.

She grabbed it off her nightstand and saw it was Paige calling her. A great and silent war raged between her head and her heart for a moment. Her heart was weary, though, and it gave up quickly. Her brain pressed decline on the call. But a few seconds later Paige called back again and this time Emily's heart won out.

"What?" Emily said, picking up the phone, not ready to let Paige off the hook just because she had called.

"Hello, Mr. Lipton," Paige said on the other end. "I was hoping I could speak to Emily?"

"Ha. Ha. Ha. Very funny," Emily said in an un-amused tone. "What do you want Paige?"

"I want…to know you," Paige said.

It definitely wasn't what Emily was expecting her to say. "What? What are you talking about?"

"I've been reading  _Leaves of Grass,_  you know, by…"

"Walt Whitman," Emily interrupted. "I do know. Why?"

"My grandma gave me my grandpa's old copy of it. Um…I was kind of hoping you'd let me read one of the poems to you?" Paige sounded like she was asking Emily to the prom.

Emily was pretty sure she'd never wanted anything more than for Paige's sweet, raspy voice to read poetry to her. But she wasn't ready to show all her cards yet.

"Why?" she asked suspiciously.

"Because…it made me think of you," Paige told her truthfully.

"Okay, go ahead," Emily said simply, though she was eager to know what poem it was.

"Alright," Paige said, trying to control her nerves, "it's called  _To a Stranger._ Here we go…

' _Passing stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon_ _  
_ _you,_ _  
_ _You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it comes to_ _  
_ _me as of a dream,)_ _  
_ _I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you,_ _  
_ _All is recall'd as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate, chaste,_ _  
_ _matured,_ _  
_ _You grew up with me, were a boy with me or a girl with me,_ _  
_ _I ate with you and slept with you, your body has become not yours_ _  
_ _only nor left my body mine only,_ _  
_ _You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, as we pass, you_ _  
_ _take of my beard, breast, hands, in return,_ _  
_ _I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you when I sit alone_ _  
_ _or wake at night alone,_ _  
_ _I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again,_ _  
_ _I am to see to it that I do not lose you.'"_

She finished and there was silence on Emily's end. She wondered if Paige could hear her heart beating.

"The thing is," Paige said after a moment, "I don't want to be strangers anymore. I want to know you. Please, Em. Can we try again tomorrow? I won't be such an idiot this time, I promise."

"That was really romantic," Emily said quietly, her walls beginning to crumble. "You're going to make an amazing girlfriend for somebody, someday."

" _You_  were amazing tonight," Paige told her. "The way you came up with all that stuff on the spot. And shit, you looked so sexy in that suit."

Emily felt Paige's words in her core, making her more than willing to forgive the girl as the image of Paige ripping the suit off of her entered her mind. She swallowed hard and exhaled loudly.

"I want to figure this out, Paige, whatever this is between us. I want to know you, too. Inside and out. Deeply." Emily wanted Paige to know how much she turned her on, and by the sound of the quiet "Fuck," that Paige uttered, Emily figured she caught her meaning.

"It might take us a while to get there, but I want that, too," Paige said breathily.

"Thank you for the poem, Paige," Emily said. "I'll have to return the favor sometime. I think I'll be able to fall asleep now."

"Good night, Emily," Paige responded, her own heart lighter than it had been all day. "It was my pleasure."

The next morning, Paige got up early and went for a run around campus. Taking a week off of training could really be detrimental to her times in the pool if she didn't at least do some cardio and get in the water for a few hours over the last four days of her visit. She ran hard for an hour and then headed back to The Log for a shower.

It didn't look like anyone was up yet when she got back, but it was only 7:30, so she wasn't surprised. Paige grabbed some clothes to change into and headed for the bathroom. Just as she reached for the doorknob, however, it opened and Emily ran right into her wearing nothing but a towel. Paige grabbed her around the waist so she wouldn't fall backwards.

"Shit. Hold on, Em. I've got you," Paige said, righting her again, but not removing her hands from the girl.

Emily was pressed up against Paige, her hands flat against her ribs and she had that same dark, hungry look in her eyes she'd had the night they had danced together. It took Paige a moment to realize why. While Paige's right hand had grabbed Emily  _outside_ of her towel, her left hand had inadvertently slipped through the gap in the towel and was now, Paige felt, wrapped firmly around Emily's bare, slightly damp waist. Paige felt arousal spark low in her belly and moved her thumb against Emily's stomach, unable to stop herself from seeing, both, how the girl's skin felt, and how Emily would react.

"Fuck, Paige," Emily growled, running her own hands down to Paige's stomach. "You're all sweaty…"

"I need to talk to you," Paige said and quickly moved them both back into the bathroom before leaning around Emily to shut the door with her hand that wasn't otherwise occupied.

"Do you really want to talk?" Emily asked her, continuing to drag her hands all over Paige's torso.

"No," Paige replied, pressing her firmly against the door.

"Thank God," Emily muttered throatily. She reached behind her, locked the door, and then moved her hands up around Paige's neck.

Neither of them had to start it, they were just kissing, their lips sliding fervently against each other and it felt like they had been for the entirety of history. Emily was so turned on, she could barely think. Every part of her being had become acutely aware of every touch and every thing happening on her skin.

Paige's hand was moving slowly up her ribcage until if she moved even another millimeter she would be holding Emily's breast in her hand. Paige's tongue ran across her lips and Emily eagerly opened her mouth, accepting any part of Paige into her that she could. She felt Paige slide a leg in between her own and push her further up against the door until nearly all of her weight was resting on the swimmer's toned thigh. The towel had ridden up, but it was still secured around her chest somehow. Paige moaned loudly into Emily's open mouth as her leg connected with Emily's center.

"Fuck, Em, I can feel you. You're so hot," she mumbled, and moved her mouth over to suck on Emily's earlobe and then further down to explore her straining neck.

Whatever sense Emily may have had left in her fell away as Paige rocked up against her. Her hands moved up and cupped Paige's breasts roughly. She could feel Paige's nipples, already hard underneath her shirt and she drug her thumbs over them. She wanted Paige to fuck her, right there, against the bathroom door. She didn't care who heard or that she'd really only known Paige for a few days. She wanted Paige to fuck her senseless.

"Yes…yes," was all Emily could manage between kisses as Paige claimed her mouth once again.

At this moment, though, Paige's hand that was under the towel began to travel south and as her pussy clenched almost painfully with want, Emily's mind re-awoke slightly. She hated herself for it, but she begrudgingly acknowledged that she wanted this thing with Paige to be a real thing and  _maybe_ fucking after they had only made out once wouldn't be such a good idea.

"Goddamit," Emily said out loud, as her fingers closed around Paige's wrist under the towel and stopped her before she'd reached her obvious target.

"What's wrong?" Paige asked, seeming to come out of a haze.

"God. Nothing. Really. But as much as I want you to fuck me against this door right now, I think we should probably get to know each other a little better." Emily was relieved to hear Paige let out a small laugh.

"Fuck. You're right. I'm sorry. I've just never been so attracted to anyone. It's a little…well, hard to navigate." Paige told her.

"You never have to apologize for doing that to me," Emily said, then licked her lips and made a small humming noise. "No, that was…that was good…I have a class at 8:30 though so unfortunately, I have to go get properly dressed."

"Okay, yeah, I should shower," Paige nodded, trying to calm herself down, though silently admitting that she would have to take care of herself in the shower to accomplish that. "I'm sorry if I got sweat on you or anything."

Emily took a moment to fully appreciate how good Paige looked in her skintight running gear. Then said, "I sincerely hope that you will be sweating on me more at some point in the future. Have a good shower," she said with a smirk and a knowing look as she left the bathroom.

Wearing a dopey grin and imagining what Paige would do to herself in the shower, Emily walked into the kitchen to head downstairs and get dressed. She wasn't paying attention to anything around her, so it startled her a little when Charlie, who was standing near the fridge and watching her, said, "Hey. Good morning?" with a shit eating grin plastered on her face. Clearly, Charlie had heard she and Paige in the bathroom.

"That depends," Emily told her coolly, "how much do you have riding on it?" She disappeared down the stairs, leaving Charlie to wonder what had just happened.


	22. Old Wounds

Paige was on her own most of the morning since both Tuck and Emily had classes. After her shower, she made herself an omelet and then went into the living room to see if there was something on television she wanted to watch. It took Paige about 5 minutes before she finally figured out that they did not have cable at The Log. Instead, she looked through the movies that were stacked on the shelves that stood on either side of the TV.

Frankly, the enormous selection overwhelmed her. She was just about to give up and eat her omelet in silence when she noticed one DVD was lying on top of the Blu-ray player already. Paige picked it up and turned it over in her hands to read the synopsis. It was  _The English Patient._  She thought it sounded interesting, so she popped the movie in and sat down on the couch to watch it.

Paige wasn't sure what to expect, but she was thoroughly blown away by how much she liked the movie. She adored it. She even paused it to write down a quote on a notebook that someone had left out on the coffee table. Maybe all of the soul-searching Paige had been doing lately had left her emotionally raw and vulnerable. Maybe it was that she was developing real, deep feelings slowly but surely for Emily and the movie was about a doomed love affair.

Whatever the reason, about three hours later, when Tuck and Emily, who had met up on the way to The Log, walked in, they found Paige sitting silently on the couch. She had tears streaming down her face and she was clutching a piece of folded up notebook paper and staring despondently at the DVD screen, which was playing on a loop.

Emily felt extremely worried as she and Tuck entered the living room. Her mind immediately flashed to the heated scene in the bathroom that morning and she wondered if this was some kind of delayed reaction. But Tuck just looked between his sister and the TV screen and said, "Jesus, Paige. You really are getting in touch with your emotions, huh?"

"It was  _so good,"_ Paige said, turning her bleary eyes to look at them.

Emily was relieved that this mood wasn't her doing, but she still wasn't sure what to do about this side of Paige she was witnessing for the first time. She put her backpack down and sat next to Paige, rubbing her soothingly on the back.

"This is real growth," Tuck said to Paige encouragingly. "I don't think you've cried at a movie since we saw  _Homeward Bound_."

Paige laughed a little at this. "I think you're right," she responded. "Shit, now I'm thinking about  _Homeward Bound…_ "

"Oh god. I'm sorry," Tuck said jumping up to grab a box of tissues from the bathroom as the tears started flowing down Paige's face again.

"This is ridiculous," she sniffled pitifully.

"Why don't we go grab some lunch somewhere and you can stop thinking about sad movies?" Emily suggested.

"Good idea," Tuck agreed, grabbing Paige's leather jacket from the coat rack and handing it to Paige. "Come on, champ, let's fatten you up."

"I hate it when you call me 'champ,'" Paige said, but she put her jacket on, and stuffed the piece of paper with the movie quote in its pocket as the three left the house.

Paige's roller coaster of a morning was soon forgotten. They went to a diner just a few blocks from campus because Emily insisted that what Paige needed was a large plate of poutine. Tuck hadn't tried it either and it was Emily's favorite dish there, so they all ended up ordering the same thing.

It was one of the most entertaining things Emily had ever seen, watching the twins sitting side by side in the red upholstered booth, elbowing one another to try to get more room and devouring their food, both of them muttering things the entire time—

"Oh. My. God."

"Is it just fries and gravy? What is  _that?_ Cheese?"

"This is sooooo good."

"Tuck, move your giant arm!"

"Just scoot over!"

Emily was laughing so hard her stomach hurt.

"I never really saw it until just now," she told them both.

"What?" Tuck asked running a finger along his empty plate and licking up the left over gravy. Paige was doing the exact same thing.

"The twin thing," Emily elaborated. "But you both eat the same way."

The twins glanced sideways at each other in tandem and then both pushed their plates away. This only made Emily laugh harder.

"You two must have been a handful at meal times," she mused.

"We did get separated a lot," Tuck admitted. "We weren't allowed to sit next to each other."

"That was your fault," Paige said defensively. "You were kicking me."

"You're the one who smeared mashed potatoes in my hair," Tuck glowered back. "That was totally uncalled for."

Emily loved getting a glimpse into what Paige had been like as a kid. Her curiosity was piqued from this exchange, so she asked, "What was the worst fight you guys ever had?"

"Well…"Tuck said, a small crease forming in his brow. "That depends on how you define 'worst.'"

"Oh, please," Paige said, pointing dramatically at the small scar by her by her right eyebrow. Emily had noticed it, and found it rather sexy, but had not yet had a chance to ask Paige how she got it.

"So, we're not counting the Coaster Incident then?" Tuck sassed his sister a bit.

"No," Paige said simply, not taking the bait. "I think Em is looking for a story you haven't already told her."

"By all means then," Tuck said gesturing with his hand in a sweeping motion for Paige to take it away.

"We were twelve," Paige began dramatically. "It was spring. Our parents were both at a church meeting for the evening. Tuck, as he often did, had greedily claimed the TV for the night. This time, if I recall correctly, it was…"

"Please don't," Tuck interjected, trying to stop Paige from revealing whatever she was about to divulge.

"A Jonas Brothers concert," Paige said with a snarl.

Tuck hung his head in embarrassment. "I was so gay, even then," he said with a sigh.

Emily was laughing, enjoying the story already. "Go on," she encouraged, thinking she would be happy to listen to Paige tell her stories for years.

"Well, I was sick of it. I just wanted to watch  _anything_ else. I mean, I already had to listen to the Jonas Brothers 24/7 because Tuck wouldn't stop playing their CD. I didn't want to stare at them for a whole two hours."

"Hey, you liked Nick!" Tuck shouted defensively.

Paige held her hands up in surrender. "I may have thought his curly hair was cute," she admitted. "Anyway…I tried to steal the remote away. We wrestled over it, but Tuck wouldn't give it up. We were pretty evenly matched back then. OBVIOUSLY, I would win now." Paige flexed her arms at this point for effect and Tuck rolled his eyes and made gagging noises.

"So, I don't remember exactly how it came up," Paige continued, ignoring Tuck's antics, "but basically Tuck told me we could watch whatever I wanted if I did whatever he dared me to do. And, hello, it's me. I would never back down from a dare! So I agreed."

"Now, please keep in mind, we were twelve," Tuck said, "and my dare was very shocking and risqué at the time I extended it."

"Dude, it was kinda lame even then," Paige said in an aside to her brother. "I had recently begun wearing what my mother referred to as 'training bras.' It was really saucy, I know," Paige added noticing Emily's raised eyebrows and smirk. "And it was a  _pretty big deal_ ," Paige finished sarcastically gesturing towards her breasts.

"What was the dare?" Emily asked impatiently. She was enjoying the story too much to be deterred, even by Paige's breasts.

"Tuck dared me," Paige said dramatically, leaning forward over the tabletop, "to run around the outside of our house once wearing only my bra on the top half."

Emily burst out laughing. "Oh man, good one, Tuck," she said looking over to him as he took a small bow in his seat.

"I was pretty cocky, even back then," Paige continued, "so I stripped my shirt off and, wearing nothing but my super revealing sports bra, went outside to begin my lap around the house. Tuck accompanied me to the back stoop to ensure I completed the dare with no cheating. Our house was on some land that had a slope on one side of it. I started running around the side of the house that was level, then into the front yard, and down the front steps that led to the driveway and garage. Everything was going great until I hit the stairs. I'd run down those steps a hundred times so I wasn't worried. But I tripped on the  _very last_ step, flew up into the air and came down, head first, well, face first, onto the cement of the driveway."

Emily gasped and threw her hands over her mouth. "Oh my god, Paige. Were you okay?"

Paige couldn't help but fall a little for Emily in that moment, as she watched the girl worry over something that had happened so long and which, obviously, as she was currently sitting in the diner, she had recovered from easily.

"I remember thinking, in midair, as everything went into slow motion, 'oh, fuck,'" Paige said. "When my head smacked the pavement, I saw this flash of light and I just had to lie there for a minute before I could get up. My head was  _killing_  me. I started screaming for Tuck it hurt so bad."

"I thought she was fucking with me. Just trying to scare me. And I didn't have any shoes on, so I stayed on the back porch," Tuck told Emily guiltily. "I still feel bad about that."

"So, with no help from this one," Paige said, thumbing over at Tuck, "I eventually got to my feet and sort of stumbled across the driveway and up the path in the back. I was really out of it, but when Tuck finally saw me he went pale as a ghost and ran down to help me, so I knew it must be bad."

"She asked me if she was bleeding," Tuck explained, "but I didn't want to scare her, so I said no, even though she had blood all over the side of her face."

"But I knew he was lying. He's a horrible liar. I put my hand up to my face, right here," Paige said pointing to her scar again, "because that's where it hurt the most and when I pulled my hand away again it was covered in blood."

"She actually yelled, 'What the hell is this then?'" Tuck said shaking his head at the memory. "What a precocious child."

"We got inside and we were so freaked out. We didn't want to call 911 but our parents hadn't jumped on the cell phone bandwagon, yet," Paige laughed.

"I believe this incident is what drove them to buy cell phones, actually," Tuck added.

"So Tuck called 911 and an ambulance showed up. I think they were surprised I was conscious, cuz when they got there, the paramedics were all, 'Is this her?' and then made us go back into the house to leave our parents a note about where we were going," Paige told Emily, who had grabbed her hand somewhere around the part of the story where Paige discovered the blood. Paige held it happily.

"My favorite part of this story," Tuck said, grinning, "was when the police showed up at our Dad's church to find my parents and the other people at the meeting thought he was being arrested. It was such a scandal when he and my mom were escorted out midway through the meeting!"

"Back to your poor, injured sister, though," Paige interjected, wanting to milk Emily's sympathy, "who had to get five stitches. I cracked my head open just to get you to turn off the Jonas Brothers!"

"It wasn't that bad," Tuck said dismissively. "You can barely see the scar anymore."

"Are you kidding me?" Paige asked staring wide-eyed at Tuck. "You're going to down play this?"

Tuck looked defensive, so Emily decided to step in.

"I actually have a thing for badass scars, so it worked out in your favor," she said squeezing Paige's hand slightly and cocking one eyebrow suggestively.

"See? I was just trying to help you win over this beautiful lady," Tuck said, seizing the excuse.

"Right," Paige responded as they all got up to pay their bills at the front counter. "Nine years ago, you foresaw this exact situation playing out."

"What can I say?" Tuck said with a lofty air. "When I'm good, I'm  _good._ "

* * *


	23. Killing Contract

On the walk back to The Log, Paige finally remembered to ask Emily about the pool situation. It turned out Vallance did have a pool, and even a water polo team.

"Do you have to be super serious about it, or could we all go?" Emily asked.

"Well, I will be doing laps for awhile, but there's no reason you and the girls can't come and swim, too," Paige told her. "It'd be nice to have someone to time me, actually."

"I'll ask my supervisor at work tomorrow," Emily said, grinning widely, "but I'm thinking a late night pool party will be going down tomorrow."

"Can I come, too? Or is it girls only?" Tuck asked, feeling a little left out.

"Of course, Tuck!" Emily told him. "You know you're one of the girls!"

Tuck smiled proudly at this. "Damn right!" he said.

* * *

 

Tuck and Emily both had to head out again for afternoon classes, but Jo and Charlie were at home when they returned. Paige spent the afternoon playing darts with the two of them (Jo won) and then helping make dinner.

The longer Paige spent around these girls, the more she wished she could stay there with them forever. She found herself wondering how she could have misjudged her own desires and needs so drastically. It seemed so obvious to Paige now that she would have flourished more at a smaller college. She loved swimming, and being on the team at Stanford was something she never took for granted, but it was starting to feel like the only thing worth going back to in California.

When Eden, Tuck, and Emily got home around 5 pm, the other three had the table laden with a delicious but less than cohesive assortment of dishes. Each dish looked mouthwateringly delicious, but as each girl had decided to make their dishes separately, they didn't really make sense together. Charlie had made an enormous pot of Matzo ball soup. Jo had made salmon patties and baked some brussel sprouts in the oven. Paige had decided to treat them all to her grandma's red velvet cake.

They stayed at the table for hours, eating slowly, groaning over how good the food was, drinking wine and talking about everything that popped into their heads. Paige and Emily were sitting together on one side of the table and Paige felt so content to just be there, feeling warm from light from the wine, as the time went by, just holding Emily's hand, just being near her.

Paige imagined herself floating above the room, looking down on the scene. The sun had set and Eden had switched on two standing lamps that cast a soft yet sufficient glow around the room. Now that everyone had finished eating, Jo had leaned back and put her stocking feet up on the table, ignoring everyone's protests about the smell. Charlie was half-heartedly suggesting that they play spin the bottle with one of the empty wine bottles. Eden had brought up a play that was coming to Chicago in the winter that she wanted to see and they were discussing splitting the bill for a hotel room one weekend and going to see it if Tuck could borrow his friend's car again. It was careless, this living, nearly inconsequential, but Paige had rarely felt so safe or so happy. It was a wholly new experience for her. She looked at he mural across from her, read the words again, and thought that for the first time she was truly stepping out of her body. Paige was finally blossoming.

As the hum of conversation continued around her, Paige thought of the tiger lilies that grew along the side of her family's house in Philadelphia. How they poured copiously, wantonly off the bushes in the summer. How she and Tuck as kids in July had sometimes stuck firecrackers in their delicate heads and lit the wicks. This sort of joy felt like that had; running barefoot in and out of exploding flower beds.

* * *

 

Emily and Paige had volunteered to wash the dishes so they could get some time alone. When they'd all finally peeled themselves away from the table, the others had happily moved off to the living room to put in a movie and pretend to do homework.

Now the two were standing at the sink, Paige, elbow deep in soapy water, and Emily, drying dishes as fast as she could with a towel that didn't seem to have any dry spots left on it.

"What you said earlier today in the diner," Paige said after they'd been silently working for a few minutes, "about having a thing for scars. Was that true, or were you just being nice?"

"I was serious," Emily told her. "I'm kind of big on honesty, actually. I rarely say things just to be nice. I can be kind of mean because of it without, well, meaning to be."

"Really?" Paige asked, surprised by this new information about the girl next to her.

"Yeah, it was kind of a problem when I was a kid," Emily explained. "I had no filter whatsoever. My mom had to instigate this rule that I could only speak my mind about other people when we were alone in the car." Emily grimaced a little and glanced over at Paige.

"Yeesh," Paige said chuckling. "I have to remember not to piss you off."

"I think it's one of the reasons I started writing, actually," Emily said. "I had a lot of emotions and opinions that I needed to get out but couldn't talk about."

Paige could sense that Emily was in rare mood. She seemed to be relaxed from the long dinner and now focused on drying the dishes just enough that she was letting her wall down and saying whatever came into her head; a quality Paige now new had been something she had been struggling to shut down her whole life. Trusting her instincts, Paige decided to just listen for a while and see what she could learn about Emily.

"Back to your original question, though," Emily went on, "I think scars are beautiful. I wrote a 20 page essay about it for my nonfiction class first year." She laughed, a little nervously, but kept talking. "Every scar is a story. It's like a history recorded on our bodies. People who don't have any scars, well, at least in my experience, are pretty boring. I've always been attracted to tomboys. The girls who played football during recess, who weren't afraid to climb a tree."

Paige grinned. She was  _definitely_  that kind of girl. "So what's this scar on your arm from?" Paige had noticed this scar on the back of Emily's left bicep as Emily wiped one of the plates.

"Oh gosh, I almost forgot about that since I can't usually see it," Emily said, raising her arm to look at the thin scar. "I got that my first year here at this frat party. There was this guy there, I didn't know who he was. The girls and I weren't close yet. It was only October. But Jo and I had met in class and we went to this party together. We saw Charlie and Eden there. They were roommates first year, actually. You know, just paired up randomly by the school in freshman housing. We all sort of knew each other from the scene shop, so we were all dancing together and this sleazy guy came up behind me and started dancing up on me. I tried to move away from him, but he just followed me, so I elbowed him in the stomach to help him get the picture. He just got really pissed when I did that and grabbed me by my arms. He scratched me pretty deeply on my arm there with one of his nails, or he was holding something, maybe. It was so dark, I couldn't really tell. Well, the second he grabbed me Charlie was all over that. She got right up in his face and pushed him off me. And when he pushed Charlie back, Eden threw her drink in his face. And when he went to grab Eden, Jo punched him right in the nose. He looked a little too stunned to do anything else and we left after that. But it was sort of the bonding moment between us all. That was when we started to become really close. "

While Paige's stomach had churned uneasily at the picture of an asshole harassing Emily, by the end of the story her heart was swelling with admiration for the three women Emily called her best friends. She'd been so wrapped up in the story that she was just holding a dirty pot, the sponge laying dejectedly in the sink.

"I'm pretty sure those girls would die for you," Paige said, her eyes betraying how badly she wished for that kind of friendship in her own life.

Emily wasn't looking, though. She was busy drying a handful of forks.

"Charlie and Jo would probably die for me. Eden would kill for me. Or kill me…we actually have this pact," Emily said nonchalantly.

"Wait, wait, wait," Paige rattled off in disbelief, putting the pot down and turning to face Emily fully. "Go back a sec. You have a  _death pact_  with Eden?"

"Yeah, we made it the summer before last," Emily said, dropping the clean silverware into the drawer next to her. "If either of us get Alzheimer's or dementia, or loses our memories somehow, the other one is going to kill them."

Paige had forgotten the dishes completely now. She was staring at Emily with a horrified look on her face. Emily finally looked up at her and realized she needed to explain further.

"I mean, it's kind of a joke," she said quickly, "but losing my memory is my biggest fear."

"You'd rather die," Paige asked, "than forget something? That's totally irrational."

"Oh, I know I'll  _forget_  things," Emily clarified. "I'll grow old and maybe even one day forget the name of my wife when she's sitting right next to me. But if I can look at her and know her in my heart and I can still feel all the years running underneath that moment, that I could live with." Emily had forgotten the dishes, too. She had moved forward and was fiddling absent-mindedly with the hem on the bottom of Paige's shirt while she spoke. "But if I lose every beautiful moment…watching the sun rise from the roof of the garage after a sleepover when I was 10…the afternoon I read Harry Potter for the first time and felt so excited about what would happen next…the way the tree looked all lit up in the dark living room when I would sneak out of my room on Christmas Eve as a kid…the night I met you. That's the kind of void that scares me. I  _would_ rather be dead than surrounded by people I know and love but can't even recognize. What kind of life would that be?" Emily was giving Paige such a burning look that it felt like Emily was reaching inside of her as she spoke.

"Sometimes I'm scared of remembering," Paige admitted under the scorch of those eyes. "Of all the dumb shit I've done. The mistakes I've made."

"But you're still so young, Paige," Emily told her imploringly, moving her hands into the front pockets of Paige's jeans. "You still have so much time to make amazing, beautiful memories."

Paige grinned as Emily's eyes softened. "I could say the same to you."

"Touché," Emily said and leaned into Paige, kissing her eagerly for a good minute before pulling back again. "Maybe we should set a minimum age."

"Like," Paige suggested, pulling Emily over to the counter by the fridge, "if you lose your memories after you're 70, then Eden can kill you."

"That sounds reasonable," Emily told her, running her hands over Paige's flat stomach.

"Actually, nothing about this seems reasonable," Paige laughed, brushing the hair away from Emily's face like she'd been doing it for years.

"I'll have to add an amendment to the contract," Emily said, ignoring Paige's last comment.

"Wait," Paige stilled in her movements. "You actually have this all down on paper?"

"Eden's pretty hardcore," Emily nodded. "She even made Charlie and Jo sign it as witnesses. She wants to avoid legal repercussions should she have to kill me."

"You are a strange duck, Emily Fields," Paige told her, chuckling, and then buried her hands in Emily's black hair at the back of her head as they began to kiss in earnest.


	24. Loose Lips

Emily had asked Paige and Tuck to keep mum about the possible pool party they would be having later that night until she cleared it with her supervisor. She had an opening shift at the fitness center, which meant she had to have the doors unlocked by 6 am. So Emily was up at 5:15 so she could take a quick shower and have some breakfast.

Before she left the house, she couldn't help but sneak a peek at Paige who was still fast asleep on the couch. She'd fallen asleep reading.  _Leaves of Grass_ was lying open on her chest and the lamp was still on. Emily gently pulled the book out of her hands and put it on the table. Paige stirred slightly, her eyes fluttering open for a moment when Emily clicked off the lamp. Just as Emily was leaving the room she heard Paige mutter sleepily, "You're so beautiful."

She moved back to the couch for a moment, kissed Paige lightly on the lips, and said, "Go back to sleep, baby."

The term of endearment had slipped out of her mouth without Emily even thinking about it. She stilled for a moment, unsure of what Paige would think, her heart hammering wildly in her chest, but Paige's eyes had closed again and she was drifting back to sleep. She probably wouldn't even remember it when she woke up. At least Emily hoped she wouldn't as she hurried to the door and left for work.

As relieved as Emily was that Paige had not seemed to notice what she had called her, she had freaked herself out quite a bit. Emily had not even wanted to call anyone "baby" since she and her high school girlfriend, Maya, had broken up before Emily had left for college. Emily couldn't help but feel like she was getting too attached to Paige. The fact remained that she lived 2000 miles away and was barely out of the closet. Emily couldn't help how she felt when she was around Paige and she wished that things were different but at present she just couldn't fathom how a relationship would ever work between them. As Emily reached the fitness center and began to unlock the doors, her mind settled on the Dickinson poem yet again. She wished she could peel back the curtain and get just a little glimpse into the future, just to see if Paige would ever land in her life completely.

There was a slow stream of people that came in to work out while Emily sat dutifully at the front desk. Around 9 am, her supervisor, a woman in her mid-40s named Karen, showed up and Emily explained to her about Paige, how she was visiting her brother and was on the swim team at Stanford. Karen had no problem giving a spare set of keys to Emily for the natatorium for the evening since Emily had been a responsible employee for over a year now and she trusted the girl. But she told her she expected them to leave it as they found it and Emily needed to return the keys to her tomorrow even though she wasn't working. Emily thanked her profusely.

* * *

 

When Emily finished her shift at 10, she gathered her things and left for the building her Intro to Film class was held in. The class started at 10:20 and Emily arrived about ten minutes early so she sat in the back, putting her bag in the seat next to her to save it for Tuck. About five minutes later, though, Emily got a huge shock when she looked up and saw not only Tuck but also Paige, walking into the classroom.

"You didn't save a seat for me, too?" Paige asked sauntering over and sliding into the open seat in front of Emily while Tuck took the one she'd been saving next to her.

"What are you doing here?" Emily asked.

"I emailed Professor Anderson to ask if she could join us today. Paige thought the class sounded interesting," Tuck explained.

Emily couldn't explain it, but she felt  _so nervous_  having Paige there. They'd been heatedly making out against the kitchen cabinets only 12 hours ago. Emily felt so silly, but couldn't stop her stomach from doing flip-flops. Paige was always popping up in her life when she least expected it.

Tuck pulled an extra notebook out of his bag and handed it, along with a pen to Paige, saying, "Here, try to look studious."

At that point, their professor, a thin, blonde, domineering woman, who also taught Victorian and Gothic Literature, walked in and everyone fell silent as her voice rang out.

"Okay," she began, "today we're going to be talking through some different camera shots and how they're used to communicate emotions to the audience. In particular, we'll be looking at the Trombone Shot, which Hitchcock first used in Vertigo."

Emily Anderson was the professor's name, and she gave a curt nod to Paige as a way of saying "I see you and it's fine you're here." Then Professor Anderson turned around to log in to the computer on the desk. She usually showed them movie clips on Youtube of the things they talked about in class. As she was logging in, Paige's hand, clutching a folded piece of paper shot behind her towards Emily. Emily quickly grabbed the paper Paige was passing to her and held it nervously for a moment before opening it quietly. Professor Anderson had found the first video and it was just starting to play it as Emily looked down at what Paige had written.

_Thanks for the kiss this morning, baby_

Emily was mortified.

"Oh, god," she mumbled as she slowly curled over on herself and laid her forehead flat on her desk. The note was still clutched in her sweaty hands. Paige  _had_  heard her. Emily felt like she was going to collapse into a pile of embarrassment.

"Miss Fields," Professor Anderson's voice boomed out suddenly, "Are you ill?"

"No," Emily replied meekly as she sat up straight again, knowing better than to bullshit this particular teacher.

"Then I suggest you pay attention," Professor Anderson told her with a stern look.

"Sorry," Emily replied and stuffed the note into her jacket pocket.

The rest of the class dragged by painfully until it ended at 11:50. Emily had spent most of it staring anxiously at the back of Paige's head, dreading the moment when Professor Anderson would release the class and she'd have to face the girl. Emily wasn't sure what to expect when Paige turned around, but what she saw was an amused expression. She had a mischievous smirk on and looked rather proud of herself.

"So are you in?" Tuck asked on Emily's left, pulling her attention away from Paige.

"What?" Emily said, wondering if she missed something he had already said.

"That note," Tuck said, narrowing his eyes at Emily. "It was inviting you to come with us to the caf for lunch, right?"

"Oh…yes!" Emily replied a little too enthusiastically. They filed out of the room and down the stairs together. Once out of the building, Tuck and Paige began chatting about something, but Emily wasn't listening to them. She was silently contemplating the possibility of spontaneous combustion.

Once in the cafeteria, they found an empty table and put their bags on it, then headed up to see what was available for lunch. Emily didn't fancy any of the already-made hot items, so she started making a sandwich at the sandwich bar. Just as she was layering some roast beef on top of a piece of provolone cheese, she felt Paige step up behind her. Emily could only see about half of Paige because of how close she was standing to her. Paige had a bowl of beef stew in one hand. Emily had stopped breathing and was just staring at the bowl Paige was holding.

"Calm down, Em. I liked it," she whispered in the sexiest purr Emily had ever heard. Emily felt wetness pooling between her legs instantaneously, but before she could respond, Paige had walked away again.

As Emily approached their table, Paige shot her a sexy smile and looked Emily up and down. This did nothing but increase her arousal and Emily acknowledged silently to herself that it was probably a good thing that Paige didn't go to Vallance. If she did they would literally be doing nothing but fucking.

"So, did you talk to your supervisor this morning?" Paige asked innocently, as if she didn't know she was orchestrating the sexual undoing of Emily Fields.

"Yes," Emily replied evenly, momentarily finding the strength to reroute the waiver she knew would have been in her voice, into her now slightly shaking hands.

"Did you have too much coffee this morning or something?" Tuck inquired, eyeing her trembling hands suspiciously.

Emily let out a sort of strangled laugh and bit into her sandwich. Paige had slipped one of her shoes off and was now running her foot up and down Emily's calf. Emily let out a moan she tried to pass off as appreciation for her sandwich.

"God, I make a good sandwich," she said quickly. "Mmmmm."

"And?" Tuck asked, trying to get her to divulge if they were allowed in the pool or not.

"And…I forgot to get a drink!" Emily said, not catching Tuck's drift, jumping up and trotting off to the soda machine.

Tuck wasted no time. As soon as Emily had left the table, he rounded on Paige.

"Did you fuck her?" he demanded.

"Theodore!" Paige said, mildly surprised that he had come right out with it.

"Whatever you're doing, stop it," he told Paige sternly, whose mouth had turned into a slight frown.

"I was having fun," she pouted.

"And put your shoe back on," he added with an exasperated sigh.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Paige mumbled, wiggling her foot back into its shoe.

When Emily got back to the table, Paige did her best to keep her libido in check, but it wasn't easy. No one, other than her mother, had ever called her "baby." Hearing Emily call her that this morning had flipped on some kind of switch inside her. Paige felt like she was soaring, like she was on top of the world. It was the same euphoria she felt after winning a race in the pool. And it also had the same side effect: extreme cockiness. That, coupled with the fact that Emily was smoking hot, had snowballed into extreme horniness. All Paige could think about was getting the other girl alone so she could do things to her that would make her call her baby again and hopefully a few other names as well…

Emily had no idea what had gotten into Paige, but she wasn't complaining. After she came back from grabbing a soda, Paige didn't physically touch her again for the rest of their lunch, but she was practically undressing Emily with her eyes the whole time. Paige had on her Vallance sweatshirt again ("I wanted to blend in with the other students during class," she explained) and it only added to this sexual game Paige seemed to be playing with her. Probably because it was the first thing that Emily had ever seen Paige wearing, the sweatshirt was always how Emily pictured Paige in her fantasies before they ripped each other's clothes off.

It was finally communicated that Family Swim Night was a go. Tuck was getting tired of the two girls eye fucking, so he excused himself to head to his next class as soon as he finished eating.

"You two either need to go somewhere and fuck or get yourselves off separately because this shit is getting ridiculous," Tuck stated dramatically as he picked up his empty plate and left them there.

"Well, that was rude," Paige muttered, blushing.

The two finished eating in silence, both of them feeling fairly embarrassed by Tuck calling them out.

"Are you…I mean, do you have another class to go to now?" Paige finally said as they stood up to return their dishes to the kitchen.

"No," Emily told her. "I just have Film on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It's pretty nice, I have the afternoons completely free."

"Yeah, that does sound nice," Paige told her grinning, happy to hear she and Emily had some time to kill together.

Outside the cafeteria, Emily turned to Paige as they walked slowly, unsure of how to proceed. She still felt a little self conscious about calling Paige "baby," especially after Tuck's comments, and she was hoping Paige would take the lead in this particular situation.

"Do you want to do something?" Emily asked, one of her hands rubbing her neck anxiously. "Go for a walk or something? Is there anything in town you wanted to see but haven't yet?"

"Yeah, there is," Paige told her, boldness coursing through her veins once more. "I was really hoping I could see your room."

Emily giggled, her hands dropping to her sides in relief. She couldn't ask for much more direction than that.

"Hmm," she said playfully. "I could probably arrange a private viewing for you."

They walked down the empty hallway that led to the doors slowly, glancing at each other every few steps.

When they were a few feet away from the door, Paige stopped.

"Emily," Paige said, stopping as they drew near the doors to leave the student union, her voice sounding earnest now, "you know I didn't just come to see Tuck this time."

"You didn't?" Emily asked, her heart beating fast.

"No. Since the first time we met, I haven't stopped thinking about you. I wanted to see you again," Paige told her.

"What is this, Paige? You and me…" Emily said, finally expressing what she'd been occupied with since they'd kissed the first time.

"Honestly, I'm not really sure. If we lived a little closer…" Paige trailed off.

Emily's heart ached in her chest at these words, wishing for something that was almost in reach.

"Paige, I've never felt…" Emily had to fight her urge to just stop talking, to ignore the voice in her head telling her that she was going to scare Paige away if she was too honest or too forward. "I've never felt so strongly about another person, especially not this quickly."

Paige held Emily's gaze as she pushed this admission out, knowing it couldn't be easy for her to say.

"I have a huge crush on you, Emily," Paige gushed, wanting to give the girl her truth, all that she knew for certain herself. "It's pretty serious. Can we just start there and see?"

"I feel like I'm walking around in a dark house," Emily mused. "But I don't need the lights because I already know where everything is."

"You're so damn poetic, sometimes," Paige grinned.

"Sorry," Emily told her sheepishly. "It's just how I process things."

"Don't apologize," Paige said. "I think it's beautiful. And that time I actually got what you were saying. It feels like we've known each other for a long time."

"I wish you lived here," Emily said after a moment.

Paige wished that, too, but she couldn't say it. Not when she had to be the one to leave and go back to a place where she felt so lonely.

"Come on," she said, slipping her fingers in between Emily's and clasping her hand tightly, fighting the sadness down in her chest. "Let's go pretend for an afternoon."

They walked out together. It was the 14th of October. The afternoon sun was dripping through the changing leaves of the old trees that towered around campus like amber. And they might as well have been ants the world seemed so large.


	25. Night Swimming

Emily and Paige spent the entire afternoon on Emily's bed in the basement. Paige shed her Vallance sweatshirt and they lay tangled together on top of the blanket, kissing whenever they felt like it (which was quite frequently), running their fingers through each other's hair, and memorizing the other's body as best they could.

They talked about everything—their first memories, their pet peeves, the music they loved, and their guilty pleasures. And they played songs for each other off of their phones and on Emily's laptop.

They were always touching— Emily's legs wrapped around Paige's middle while she looked up a video to show her on Youtube. Paige tracing her fingers along each bone of Emily's spine and then grabbing her ass firmly as Emily lay on top of her while they made out. Emily found a sensitive spot on Paige's back that made her arch and groan each time her fingers brushed over it. And Paige discovered that Emily was the most ticklish on her neck and it made her squirm and laugh when Paige even made a tickling motion anywhere near it.

Paige tucked every moment they spent away into herself like she was storing up for a hurricane or a blizzard. She didn't know when, after this visit, she would get to see Emily again. Emily, for her part, insisted that they take some pictures with her phone as they goofed off, kissing and pulling faces for the camera.

In short, they spent the afternoon beginning to fall in love.

When evening finally rolled around, they begrudgingly pried themselves out of the little land of Emily's bed and went back up the stairs to see what was happening for dinner.

"I think you've dehydrated me," Paige told Emily as the opened the door to the kitchen. "Is it possible to become dehydrated from kissing someone so much?"

"Well, I feel fantastic," Emily told her seriously, "so maybe I sucked you dry."

"You greedy, greedy woman," Paige said, grabbing Emily around the waist and pulling her in for a kiss. She was already missing Emily's physical presence against her from the hours in the basement.

"You need to rehydrate before we hit the pool later," Emily said smiling, happy to be in Paige's arms whenever she got the chance.

"Did you say pool?" Jo asked as she and Charlie walked in to the kitchen.

Emily and Paige had decided over the course of the afternoon that they would pretend that Emily had stolen the keys to the natatorium and they were going to break in to use the pool. It was Paige's idea, because, according to her, Emily needed some more street cred. Emily turned in Paige's arms to face her friends.

"I hope you two don't have plans tonight," she said deviously. "I stole the keys to the pool from my supervisor. We're breaking in. Tonight. At midnight. Dress in black."

"Are you serious?" Jo said looking worried.

"Holy shit!" Charlie declared. "You better be serious! That sounds  _amazing_. We do the best stuff when Paige visits."

"I am completely serious," Emily said, staring them down. "Where's Eden? I need to let her know as well."

"I'll text her," Charlie said, waving Emily off. "She's busy pretending to be stuck in a box right now. It's a hard life being a mime."

About 20 minutes into dinner, Charlie's phone buzzed with an incoming message. It was a video of Eden miming a front crawl and jumping off a diving board.

"Guess that means Operation Aquatic is a go," Emily said happily when Charlie played the video for them all.

"Edie's really improved in the last two weeks," Charlie said about the video. "Last week she sent me a video asking me to make her a sandwich, you know, through mime, and I thought she was asking if I wanted to play strip poker."

"Why would she mime ask you to play strip poker with her?" Jo asked, shaking her head at Charlie's presumption.

"Why  _wouldn't_ she, is the real question," Charlie said with a cocky grin. "Anyway, she was really pissed when I showed up with a deck of cards and an extra pair of socks instead of a sandwich."

"Wait, why did you have an extra pair of socks?" Emily asked.

"I'm very self conscious about my ankles," Charlie explained, crossing her arms across her chest protectively.

"Where did you guys even find her?" Paige said, laughing loudly and gesturing toward Charlie.

* * *

 

When 11:30 finally rolled around, the girls and Tuck, who had come over around 8 pm, all met by the front door with their suits and towels. Jo, Tuck, Emily, and Paige had on normal clothes. Eden and Charlie, however, were dressed head to foot in black and Charlie was even clutching a ski mask. Emily burst out laughing when she saw them come down the stairs to join the others.

"Laugh now, Fields," Charlie told her, "but when we're being chased by security guards, we'll disappear so fast you'll think we were ghosts."

"That's right," Eden said, flicking up the hood of her sweatshirt behind Charlie and peering around her shoulder. "We're made of darkness."

Paige was looking at Emily with the most amused look on her face. She didn't have to say anything for Emily to know what she was thinking; Paige's idea to let the girls believe they were breaking into the pool had definitely paid off. Emily felt justified in getting some pay back for the bets they had placed on she and Paige over the weekend.

"Come on, we need to get to the pool before Paige forgets how to swim," Tuck said, ushering them all out the door.

Jo and Tuck fell into the lead with Paige and Emily quietly holding hands behind them and Charlie and Eden bringing up the rear.

"I think you should stick around just so we can prank the girls together," Emily told Paige as they walked. Paige smiled sadly, her face falling. She hoped that Emily wouldn't be able to tell in the dim, yellow glow the moon was casting through some thin clouds above them.

"I am a lot of fun on April Fool's Day," Paige chuckled, trying to be cheerful. "I convinced my 3rd grade teacher that I had injured my hand in a bizarre movie theater accident. I had this bandage on my hand and I'd colored it with a red marker. That was probably my best year."

"You sound like you were a little shit," Emily said, squeezing Paige's hand and laughing.

A melancholy air had settled over Paige despite the story she had just told. Emily hoped that swimming would shake Paige out of it. As they walked, Emily resolved not to bring up her wish for Paige to stay there with them at Vallance again, as it always seemed to make her sad.  _It's a selfish wish, anyway,_ Emily told herself.

Ahead of them, Tuck was quietly telling Jo that they weren't actually breaking into the pool and behind them Charlie was telling Eden that she could now list experience as a cat burglar on her résumé.

* * *

 

Autumn was Paige's favorite time of year, probably because she had always associated it with the excitement of her birthday. But it was also her favorite weather.

During her freshman year at Stanford, Paige had managed to enroll in all afternoon classes. She would get up very early for swim practice, which was from 6 to 8 am Monday through Friday and then have the rest of the morning free until her first class at 12:30 pm.

There was something almost magical about that particular time. Paige would often go back to her dorm to relax, watch something on her computer, or just read and sometimes take a nap if she had stayed up too late the night before. Most days she would call her Grandma Hazel as well. It was the first time Paige had been apart from her family for so long and she had missed them more than she wanted to admit.

Grandma Hazel seemed to understand how desperately homesick Paige was without her actually having to say it. She never teased Paige or even asked why she was calling so much. Grandma Hazel would relay the best questions from the previous evening's episode of Jeopardy. She would tell Paige about her father's sermons and the going-ons at church. She would tell her what she was planning on making for dinner that night. And she would listen to Paige go on and on about the other girls on the team, who was best at what stroke, and what she was doing to improve her times. The conversations were often the only balm for Paige's aching heart. She was too ashamed to admit to her parents or Tuck just how unhappy she was because all anyone ever talked about was how college had been the best time of their lives. She'd wondered if their was something wrong with her.

Before she'd left for Stanford, it had never even occurred to Paige that she wouldn't like it. And once she had finally admitted to herself that it wasn't just an adjustment period, that going to college clear across the country just wasn't for her, Paige was much too stubborn to do anything about it. She felt stuck, like she had to live with the decision she'd made because it was the right thing to do and she had a full ride to one of the best universities in the country. She'd just slogged through, from one week to the next.

Those few hours of the morning were when Paige had been happiest. There was a tree just outside her dorm that the sunlight gently filtered through, dappling her bed and walls in the fractured light. She would open the window and enjoy the breeze that played across her face as she lay on her bed and chatted with her grandmother. Paige would close her eyes and imagine that the leaves were changing colors, that the air was growing crisp and heady. In those moments, Stanford almost felt like home.

Being here at Vallance with Tuck and Emily and their friends gave Paige a glimpse at what college might have been like for her, at the happiness she could have had. As the group approached the fitness center, all this was streaming through Paige's mind, filling her with such a heaviness that it felt like someone had filled her pockets with rocks.

Emily unlocked the doors and everyone filed into the enormous, dark building, their footsteps echoing in the cavernous lobby they had entered. When the door was relocked behind them, Emily led everyone down the main hallway and off into a narrow staircase that smelled faintly of chlorine. The stairs led down to another hall that held the entrance to the pool.

Emily pointed out the men's locker room further down the hallway for Tuck as she and the girls headed into the women's room.

"The doors into the pool in the locker rooms should be locked, so let's just meet out here and we can go in the main door together," Emily said quietly. Tuck gave a thumbs up to her and tiptoed into the doorway on the other side of the hall.

Charlie and Eden looked absolutely thrilled to be accomplishing what they still believed to be an illicit activity; Jo looked a great deal more relaxed now that she knew it wasn't. Emily looked over at Paige. She looked so solemn, but her movements were sure and confident. Emily wondered how many locker rooms Paige had been in over the years. Paige disappeared into a bathroom stall to change into her suit while the other four girls stripped down in front of one another; it was nothing they hadn't seen before. When everyone was changed (Paige with a towel wrapped around her waist) they went back into the hall. Tuck was pacing around, a darker shape in the already dark hallway, waiting for them.

Emily hadn't turned on any lights yet, partially because it was more fun that way and also, she wasn't familiar with this part of the building, so she didn't know where the switches were. Whoever had designed the fitness center must have thought it funny to put all the light switches nowhere obvious. They all seemed to be the middle of the room or hidden in some master panel that controlled entire wings of the building. Due to this lack of light, Emily fumbled trying to find the right key. She was also shivering slightly in the hallway wearing just her bikini. Finally, she got the door unlocked and walked into the natatorium, the others following her lead.

Although the pool was on the lower level, it was situated on the side of the building and had a row of large windows running along the very top of the outside wall. Moonlight, and also some street lamps, probably, were shining in and playing off the water, giving the humid room a blue, shimmering glow. It reminded Emily of what a kaleidoscope might look like if only one color segmented and churned in the cylinder. It was mesmerizing.

The others had all moved down to the end of the pool that wasn't roped off into lanes and Emily watched as the three girls all seized Tuck, who was screaming in a shrill voice, by his arms and legs and threw him into the water with a loud splash. Then they proceeded to try to push each other in as Tuck grabbed at their legs from the side of the pool. Emily laughed at them for a moment and then turned around until her eyes fell on Paige.

If the train yard was Emily's cathedral, this was Paige's. She had shed the towel and was crouched at the edge of the pool, skimming her fingers across the very top of the water. Her body was even more than Emily could have imagined. More toned, more soft, more angular, more tense, more calm, more alert. She was an enigma. Her body seemed to ripple as the light reflected off the water and across Paige's creamy skin as she stood up and began to stretch. Her flexibility was incredible. Her limbs looked like ribbons flowing away from her torso and Emily once again acknowledged how similar Paige was to her brother; she undoubtedly had the grace of a dancer.

After a few minutes of stretching, Paige climbed up on one of the diving platforms and bent her body into a crouch Emily had seen swimmers take when she watched the Olympics. She was so beautiful like this, completely in her element. Paige had brought her cap and goggles, but she'd left them at the edge of the pool. Emily understood instinctively that Paige didn't want anything to separate her from the water in these first few laps. Emily knew it because, sometimes, she couldn't help but take a Sharpie and write scraps of poetry on the skin of her arms and legs, hoping that something of the words themselves would seep into her innermost being. It was this desire to be consumed by what one loved and Emily was no stranger to it.

Emily watched, utterly entranced as Paige let her body go, springing forward with the unbridled joy of a dog just let off its leash. She sliced into the water and it streamed around her briefly before it engulfed her completely. Images and words streamed through Emily's mind as she watched Paige swim, attempting to articulate something of this experience that she might be able to write down later. What she settled on was this: if Emily had been drowning, Paige would have been the prayer that left her blue lips. If life were a pilgrimage, Paige would have been the stream that broke forth when the saint's foot brushed the parched earth, that place toward which Emily was traveling.


	26. Pool Bottom Tea Party

Paige swam a few laps before coming to rest at the side of the pool, her arms resting on the deck.

"Are you going to get in or what?" Paige asked Emily who was still just staring at her. Paige looked lighter, somehow, than when they'd entered the building and she was grinning over at Emily, who was tying her hair into a loose knot at the back of her head.

"Sorry, I was a little distracted," Emily told her, walking over to the edge of the pool and dipping a toe in tentatively.

"And what exactly were you distracted by?" Paige asked, fishing for a compliment.

"Mostly your tits," Emily said flippantly. "But also your ass in that suit."

She splashed Paige a little with her foot. For some reason she didn't want to reveal how completely captivated she'd felt watching Paige swim. Paige laughed loudly at the boldness of Emily's comment before responding.

"Damn, Fields," Paige said, pushing back from the wall a few feet to give Emily more room to join her. "Come get it, if that's how you feel."

The water was deliciously warm as Emily stepped off the deck and plunged to the bottom of the pool before pushing off the floor and surfacing again. Paige had her wrapped in her arms before Emily could even open her eyes.

"Want to know my favorite thing about being in the water?" Paige said in Emily's ear. She had moved Emily's legs so they were wrapped around her waist and Emily had wrapped her arms around the swimmer's neck. Paige's arms were wrapped tightly around Emily, too, with one arm underneath her ass so that she was holding her up completely.

"What?" Emily asked, sighing contentedly at the feeling of Paige holding her so intimately. She felt completely safe and let Paige use her legs to tread water for them both.

"How everything is nearly weightless," Paige said. "I could hold you like this for hours and never get tired."

"Please do," Emily told her, their eyes locked together.

Paige smiled at that and Emily couldn't help but lean in and kiss her. They both quickly became lost in each other's mouths, the kisses deepening when Paige slid her tongue into Emily's mouth, both of them moaning softly from time to time. They carried on like that for quite some time until Charlie began whooping at them from the other end of the pool. Paige groaned as Emily separated their lips.

"Aren't you supposed to be swimming laps?" she asked, her eyebrows creasing slightly as she looked at Paige.

"Uh, yeah, but kissing you is so much more fun," Paige whined.

"Paige Darlene McCullers!" Emily said sternly.

"Okay, okay," she relented, laughing over that silly name again. She was starting to like it more than her real middle name. "But first you have to have a tea party with me."

"What in the world are you talking about?" Emily figured this had to be code for something.

"You never did that as a kid when you went swimming with your friends?" Paige asked incredulously.

"Uh, no. Please explain," Emily said, her thumbs running across Paige's collarbone as they spoke.

"We swim down to the bottom of the pool and we sit, cross-legged, on the floor, and then we pretend to drink tea. You have to stick your pinky out." Paige said this all so seriously, like it was instructions on how to disarm a bomb, that Emily couldn't help but laugh and bury her head in the side of Paige's neck.

"Oh my god, that's ridiculous!" Emily spluttered, her voice muffled against Paige's neck, in between chuckles. "Why would we do that?"

"Because it's fun!" Paige gave her puppy dogs eyes and a small pout as Emily leaned her head back up. "Come on Em, have a tea party with me!"

"Alright, alright." Emily would've done it anyway but pouty Paige was adorable. "But right after, you have to do your laps," she added, poking Paige sharply in the chest wither forefinger.

"I promise," Paige told her, drawing a cross over her heart.

"Okay, then. Let's have a tea party," Emily said, laughing and reluctantly unwrapping her legs and arms from around Paige.

They moved about three feet apart from each other, both of them treading water and Emily waited for Paige's signal.

"Ready?" Paige asked, expectantly. "One, two, three!"

On three, they dove under the surface of the water and swam all the way down to the bottom of the pool. Paige made it down first and looked back to see where Emily was. She had the biggest grin on her face as Emily reached the floor and joined her, making sure to sit with her legs crossed when Paige pointed out her own posture to remind Emily. Once they were seated facing toward each other, Paige looked her right in the eyes and raised her arms up, pretending to hold a cup and saucer in front of her chest, the pinky of her right hand sticking out. Emily matched her actions and they both pretended to take a few sips of tea before swimming back up to the surface. The entire thing had taken no more than 20 seconds.

As Emily broke the surface, she took in Paige, her arms and legs moving lazily around in the water, an enormous smile plastered on her face, her hair dark and wet around her shoulders. She was everything Emily wanted. She passionate and hardworking but playful, so full of joy, and also brave and smart.

"Are you even real?" Emily said, the words tumbling from her mouth as they entered her mind.

Paige didn't answer her. She just grinned, dove under the water again, swam over to the side of the pool, and hoisted herself out.

"Come here," Paige said to Emily, who was still bobbing in the water dazedly. "Can you sit on the edge and time me on a few laps?"

"Sure," Emily told her, pulling herself up by her arms to sit on the side of the pool. Paige handed her a stopwatch and put her cap and goggles on.

Emily timed Paige a few times from the side of the pool. Pretty soon the others came over and joined them, floating in the lanes around Paige's and taking turns yelling "Go!" and timing her and cheering as Paige swam. Paige couldn't stop smiling. She wished she had could have had such an enthusiastic group of supporters at her meets.

When she was finished, the others wanted to race. Paige taught them all how to dive off the platform and how to properly position themselves for a good entrance into the water. After she showed them the basics, she lined up the four girls for a race.

Eden got scared at the last second and screamed and jumped in feet first instead of diving. Charlie just ended up doing a rather painful belly flop. Jo got off the block okay, but ended up surfacing in Charlie's lane, which didn't matter because Charlie was merely floating and clutching her reddened stomach while she groaned loudly. Emily was the only one who managed the dive and successfully swam to the end of the lane.

"You know," Paige told her proudly, "you would've made a pretty good swimmer."

"Maybe I was in another life," she replied, winking at Paige.

* * *

 

It was nearly 3 am when the group finally made it back to The Log, having parted with Tuck at the edge of campus when he headed in the direction of his dorm. The girls were all still pretty wound up from swimming and Charlie wouldn't stop complaining about how hungry she was, so Jo made everybody one of her famous three-tiered grilled cheese sandwiches. Eden turned on the soundtrack to Rent and the five of them sat down in the middle of the kitchen floor and happily devoured the gooey sandwiches as Jo handed them out on plates right from the skillet. It was nearly 4:30 when they all finally headed off to bed after a spirited rendition of Take Me or Leave Me by Charlie and Eden that had the other three collapsed in fits of laughter.

Paige finished bidding good night to Jo, Charlie, and Eden and then turned her attention to Emily who was placing the dirty frying pan in the sink along with the plates they had used.

"I'll let somebody else worry about those tomorrow," Emily said sleepily, referring to the dishes. "God, I'm exhausted." This statement was capped by a well-timed yawn and Paige soon followed suit. They stood there and yawning at each other for a few seconds and then laughed.

"Did you know," Paige told Emily, "that children under 3 years of age don't yawn contagiously? And neither do people with autism."

Emily looked at her quizzically. "You have a strangely in-depth knowledge of yawns," Emily said, moving over and opening the door to the basement.

Paige was just about to tell her good night when Emily, her hand still on the doorknob, turned toward her and said, "You coming?"

"Yes," Paige said simply and followed Emily down to the basement.

They didn't have sex that night. They simply stripped down to their underwear and climbed under the thick quilt on Emily's bed. For a moment they stared at each other, not touching, but looking appraisingly at this place they had ended up in, as if choosing between two paths that stretched before them. Then, wordlessly, Paige turned her back to Emily and scooted back until her body was pressed against the other girl's form. Emily reached behind her, switched off the lamp, and then curled easily around Paige's body, pressing every inch of their frames together in the darkness.

"Little spoon, huh?" Emily whispered into Paige's ear.

"I'm a little surprised, too," Paige replied, laughing lightly.

Emily kissed the nape of Paige's neck and closed her eyes. She drifted to sleep with the smell of chlorine enveloping her and seeping into her dreams. There was another scent, too, that Emily found there at the base of Paige's head, just before she slipped into unconsciousness. It was richer and layered, but bright, as well. It reminded Emily of freshly sharpened pencils, of buying school supplies as a child at the end of summer.


	27. Playing Hooky

Emily woke up suddenly to the feeling of a body pressing on top of her. It was still pitch black in her room. It always was. She had no idea what time it was, what day it was even, for a moment. All she was aware of was Paige's mouth, hot and wet, moving against her neck. She didn't say anything, just moaned and let her hands run up Paige's sides until she had one hand on the back of her head, pulling her in, eager for more.

Paige moved up to Emily's jaw, sucking, kissing, and biting her skin gently. When she eventually made her way to Emily's mouth, she stopped for a moment, grabbing her by the inside of her thighs; she opened up Emily's legs and settled herself between them. Paige pressed her pubic bone firmly against Emily's core.

"I want you," Paige said roughly as she laced the fingers of both her hands with Emily's, forced them above her head and began kissing her again, slipping her tongue into Emily's desperate mouth. She pressed herself down against Emily's pussy again and again, driven forward by the breathy gasps the motion was eliciting from the girl underneath her as they kissed and sucked at one another's lips and tongues. Emily was already drenched and was sure that Paige could feel it through her underwear. She wanted to ask for more, but she also wanted Paige to dominate her completely and take what she wanted. She was grinding shamelessly against Paige, desperately seeking out pressure as she lifted her hips off the mattress again and again as their kisses grew more frenzied and sloppy.

Finally Paige moved her mouth down to Emily's chest and released her hands so she could pull back the cups of Emily's bra. The fact that neither of them could see each other in this windowless room only heightened the feeling of their bodies against each other. Paige was tugging roughly at Emily's bra now, sliding her hands in to grab her breasts.

"Just…take it off. Take it off, Paige," Emily stuttered out, pushing herself up slightly on her forearms so Paige could reach around behind her and unclasp her bra.

Paige fumbled slightly and Emily thought briefly that this must be the first time Paige had ever taken off another woman's bra. She did very well for her first time. It was only a few seconds before Emily felt the clasp release and the bra slacken around her. Paige pulled the straps off of her shoulders and tossed the garment aside. This brief pause had slowed both girls down slightly and when Paige returned her hands to Emily's breasts she was gentler and less hurried about what she was doing.

It was like being blindfolded. Emily never knew where she would feel Paige's hands and mouth next, and she gasped each time the unexpected contact came. At first Paige just held both of her breasts in her hands, groping them reverently and whispering "Fuck," over and over as she felt Emily's nipples hardening against her palms. Then she began pinching and rolling Emily's nipples in between her fingers, listening to the change in Emily's moans as she did this, feeling her begin to grind against Paige again slowly.

Without warning, Paige slid her hands down onto Emily's stomach and bent down, completely enveloping one of Emily's erect nipples in her hot mouth. Emily's back arched up into Paige, it felt so good.

"Oh god, baby," Emily muttered.

Paige smiled around the nipple that was still in her mouth. She pulled back just enough to say, "I've been waiting for that," before she moved over to Emily's neglected breast and began working it over with her tongue and teeth.

Emily was completely undone by this point. She'd wrapped her legs around Paige's thighs, pulling her roughly against her center. One hand was threaded into Paige's hair and the other was busy trying to unhook Paige's bra, but it was a little difficult to concentrate on that when the girl's tongue was flicking across her nipple.

Emily was just about to tell Paige that she needed  _more_ , that she wanted her in between her legs, when a loud, beeping noise and insistent vibration startled them both. It was the alarm on Emily's cell phone going off.

"You've got to be kidding me," Paige said, Emily's nipple coming out of her mouth with a loud pop.

"Fuck!" Emily said. She felt out of her mind with desire as she reached over and grabbed her phone to turn off the alarm. "Damn it!"

"Em, calm down," Paige told her. She didn't understand why Emily was so upset. "We don't have to stop."

"Yes, we do," Emily told her. "I have to go to class and then take back the keys to the pool."

She leaned across the bed and switched her lamp on.

"Oh," Paige said sadly, blinking and squinting against the bright light. "You can't skip?"

Emily glanced at the phone in her hand, looking at the time. It really wasn't like her to skip class. Then she glanced at Paige, looking at her entire body for the first time since she'd turned the lamp on.

Her hair was messy and tangled from Emily's hands grabbing and pulling at it. Her eyes looked cloudy and dark. One bra strap had slipped off her shoulder. Her lips were red, swollen, and wet. Emily could have possibly ignored all of this, but when her eyes trailed down lower, to the black pair of boy shorts that were riding low on Paige's hips, it was just too much.

"It's just one class," Emily told herself, and when Paige smiled, she realized she'd said it aloud as well.

"Where was I?" Paige said in a low growl and leaned forward again to kiss Emily's stomach and abs, moving her way up until she took Emily's breast into her mouth again.

It didn't take long for Emily to get completely worked up again. Paige was relentlessly sucking on her tits, moving up to her mouth every now and then to switch things up. Eventually Emily managed to get Paige's bra unhooked. When this happened, though, Paige pulled back nervously and stopped her before the bra had come off completely.

"We should probably talk for a second," Paige said, giving Emily a nervous grin.

"It's okay," Emily said. "We don't have to go all the way if you're not ready. We don't have to do anything you don't want to."

Paige's face became utterly serious as Emily said this and she looked down at their bodies tangled together intimately and seemed to realize what they were inevitably heading toward. Her eyebrows creased and it was fairly evident to Emily that Paige was wondering if she was ready to have her first time with a girl or not.

"Sex is a really big deal," Emily reassured her.

Paige snapped out of her reverie as Emily said this and told her, "You're right. I guess we have two things to talk about."

Emily raised her eyebrows quizzically and looked pointedly at Paige who was still clutching the cups of her bra over her breasts.

"This has been a very eventful week for me," Paige went on. "I mean, I've definitely learned a lot about myself. And you're so…" Paige took a moment to stare appreciatively at Emily's breasts, wet with her own saliva. "You're the sexiest thing I've ever seen. Or put my mouth on."

Emily giggled at this. She was thoroughly enjoying the way Paige was staring at her.

"Paige?" Emily said, and Paige's eyes snapped back up to her own.

"Sorry," Paige grinned. "Um, what I'm trying to say is, I think my head might explode if I have sex with you so soon."

"Well, we definitely don't want that to happen," Emily told her smiling. "I'm very fond of that head. But I got the feeling that's not what you wanted to talk about originally…"

"No…you're right, again. It wasn't," Paige said, stumbling over her words, "I just wanted to warn you…I mean, it's not a  _bad_ thing, but some people, I guess, don't really care for them…"

"You're rambling and you're scaring me a little bit," Emily interrupted her.

Paige dropped her head and took a deep breath then looked back up, grimacing, and said, "I have a nipple piercing." She finally let her hands drop and her breasts were completely on display for Emily to see.

Emily felt mesmerized for a moment. Nipple piercing or not, Paige had gorgeous tits.

"Mmmm," Emily breathed out as she took in Paige's full, perky breasts. The nipples were a little darker that she had expected or imagined them to be, and there was small sliver stud that ran through her left one.

"I've never cared before if anybody else liked it," Paige was saying, but in all honesty, Emily wasn't listening anymore. She couldn't help herself; she needed to touch Paige. The nipple piercing was hot and it was turning her on.

Emily took both of Paige's breasts in her hands and squeezed them, then ran her thumbs over the nipples tentatively, paying special attention to the barbell shaped stud underneath her right thumb. Paige's nipples hardened immediately and she let out a loud moan as Emily touched her. She wanted Paige in her mouth, but she'd never been with a girl who had a piercing here before and she didn't know if it changed anything.

"Can I suck on it?" Emily asked, her movements becoming rougher, her hands groping and needy. "Will it hurt you?"

Paige was having trouble focusing now that Emily was touching her like this. Instead of answering, she took Emily's head in one of her hands and pulled her face into her breast where Emily eagerly opened her mouth to taste Paige here for the first time.

The metal felt interesting in her mouth, slightly cooler than Paige's skin as Emily sucked on it and rolled her tongue around the stud. She experimented with it, tugging at it gently with her teeth and noticing it had given Paige a little extra sensitivity on that nipple.

Paige was gone, her head thrown back, her hips bucking, seeking some sort of pressure. But their position didn't give her much to press against. Emily wanted to fuck her desperately, but she knew she needed to respect what Paige had just told her. Instead, she pulled Paige down on top of her from where she had been kneeling, and moved to the other breast for a few minutes. Paige looked so sexy, so wanton, writhing on top of her with Emily torturing her like this.

"Touch yourself," Emily said, pulling back from the girl's breasts momentarily. "If you want."

"Are you sure?" Paige asked, locking eyes with the girl under her. The prospect frightened her slightly, but the thought of touching herself while Emily watched turned her on even more.

Emily merely grabbed Paige's right hand from her own waist, and moved it over to the waistband of Paige's boy shorts. Paige didn't fight it. She didn't want to fight it. She slid her hand down into her wet folds and slid two fingers deep inside and started to fuck herself on top of Emily, her wrist providing enough pressure to appease her throbbing clit.

It was the sexiest thing Emily had ever seen, Paige's hand buried in her pussy, her eyes clamped shut, groans escaping her panting mouth, as Emily continued to suck and pinch her nipples.

Paige knew she was getting close. As she worked her fingers inside herself, she forced her eyes open and was met with Emily's dark stare.

"I want to see you cum, baby," Emily told her and pulled her into a searing kiss.

Paige thrust into herself harder, hitting the spot she was looking for and after a few more thrusts, her orgasm finally hit, causing her to fall forward onto Emily's shoulder, where she bit down to stifle the scream of pleasure coursing through her.

Emily held her as the orgasm racked her body with spasms and then gently rolled her over beside her on the bed so she could recover. Paige had barely returned to earth when she felt Emily grab her hand again. She opened her eyes and looked down to watch as Emily took the hand Paige had just used to fuck herself, brought it up to her mouth and slid Paige's wet fingers deep into her mouth, sucking them clean, and moaning appreciatively. The sight almost made Paige cum again.

"So, you going to tell me about that nipple ring?" Emily said when she had finished licking every bit of cum off Paige's fingers. She rolled over to look at Paige and saw her staring, open mouthed, at her. "I'm sorry. I just had to know what you taste like."

Paige gulped and leaned in and kissed Emily deeply, tasting herself in Emily's mouth and groaning at this new pleasure. Paige closed her eyes as they kissed and when they pulled apart, she kept them closed for a few moments, cementing the memory in her mind. When she opened them again, Emily was smiling at her.

"You taste good," she said simply.

"I went through a very rebellious period when I was 17. Put some black streaks in my hair for a while. Listened to Nirvana a lot ," Paige told her. "I wanted to get my nose pierced, but my mom and dad wouldn't let me. They said I had to uphold a certain image as the pastor's daughter. So, when I turned 18, I went and got a piercing where they couldn't see it. You know, just to stick it to them. I ended up really liking it. But I sort of forget about most of the time. Not many people know I have it."

"Does Tuck know you have it?" Emily asked.

"Yeah, I made him come with me to the tattoo parlor where I had it done. They explained what they were going to do before they took me back into the private room and Tuck nearly passed out just hearing about it."

"Well, it's really sexy," Emily told her, running her fingers over it gently.

Emily's alarm went off on her phone for the second time, then.

"Okay, this time, I really do have to go," she told Paige. "If I don't get those keys back for the pool, I'll lose my job. And it's your fault I have them. And that I'm running late. So you have to come with me!"

Paige groaned as Emily got off the bed and grabbed her by the ankles and pulled her over to the edge of the mattress.

"Alright, alright!" Paige said. "But don't act like you didn't enjoy it…"

Emily smiled broadly. "Oh, of course. It was a very inspiring experience. In fact, I was thinking I'd write a poem about your nipple piercing for my next class."

Emily burst out laughing as Paige looked at her, horrified.


	28. Mimes and Goodbyes

By the time Paige and Emily had returned from taking the keys back to the fitness center, Tuck had showed up looking for Paige. He was just calling her as the two girls walked in the door.

"Hey, where were you?" Tuck asked.

"I walked over to the fitness center with Emily to return the pool keys," Paige responded.

"Oh," Tuck said, but then his head cocked to the side in confusion. "Did you meet her after class?" He knew Emily's schedule pretty well.

"No, I, uh, sort of skipped this morning," Emily told him, sitting down on the sectional.

"Why? You never miss class…" Tuck looked accusingly over at Paige. "Why do I have a feeling this is your fault?"

"Excuse me!" Paige said defensively. "Why do you automatically assume I'm to blame? It was Emily's decision."

"Oh really?" Tuck asked looking over to Emily to see if she would corroborate.

"Completely my decision," Emily said. "Paige offered to show me her piercing, and I decided to stay."

"Em!" Paige looked distraughtly at the other girl.

Tuck just burst out laughing.

"Please, spare me the details." Tuck said when his laughter had finally subsided. "Moving on, though…it's Paige's last day. What should we do? Besides everyone keeping their shirts on for the rest of the day."

"Tuck, I swear to God I will end your career as a dancer before it even starts!" Paige said, moving toward her brother.

"Okay, okay," he said, holding his hands up in surrender. "I'm sorry. I just had to get one good jab in!"

"Eden's doing something on the patio in an hour," Emily told them both, looking down at the text she'd just received from Charlie. "Charlie asked me to bring her camera and meet her outside The Corn Husk in 45 minutes."

"It's the fast food grill on campus," Tuck told Paige, answering her unasked question. "Remember? We went there the first time you visited and got some mozzarella sticks."

"Oh yeah! Those were good," Paige said, her stomach rumbling. "Can we go and get some food there? I'm starving."

"Yeah, I bet you're starving…" Tuck mumbled, turning to grab his jacket from the couch. Paige shoved him in the back.

"McCullers and McCullers!" Emily said standing up. "Please behave yourselves."

"Sorry," they both mumbled.

* * *

 

Half an hour later, sitting on the bright patio outside of The Corn Husk, Tuck, Paige, and Emily were all very concentrated on eating the food in front of them. Paige had ordered a breakfast bagel sandwich, mozzarella sticks, tator tots, and a hot dog.

When Charlie spotted them and sat down at the table to join them, she took one look at Paige ravenously devouring the spread before her and said, "Jesus Emily, what did you do to her?"

Emily giggled and put her hand over her mouth to stifle it as Paige looked over angrily, a sting of mozzarella stretching out of her mouth to the half stick she was holding in her hand.

"You know, for the record," Paige said, breaking the string and swallowing the bite of food in her mouth, "I hadn't eaten anything in like eight hours. And since I'm sure you'll know soon enough, anyway," she said turning to Charlie, "I have a nipple piercing," Paige declared dramatically and picked up her hot dog.

"Nice!" Charlie said, nodding appreciatively at Paige. "Can I see it?"

"No you can't see it!" Emily exclaimed, smacking Charlie across the arm.

"Not like that!" Charlie said, turning around to Emily. "Although I'm sure Paige has lovely breasts" –Paige grunted an affirmative sort of noise through her bite of hot dog— "I've thought about getting one myself and I just wanted to see what it was like."

"Well, you'll just have to find someone else's boobs to do that with," Emily told her sternly.

Tuck sighed deeply from across the table. "I love you all," he began, "but I would appreciate it  _so much_ if we could talk about anything other than my sister's tits."

"I'll be merciful this time, Tuck," Charlie said, "but next time we're talking about Paige's tits, you'll just have to deal with it."

Tuck rolled his eyes at her. "Where's Jo? I need a little sanity here," Tuck asked.

"I think she's in charge of starting the music," Charlie said and looked at the time on her phone. "Shit, it's about to start! Did you get my camera, Em?"

"Yeah," Emily said pulling her bag open and retrieving the camera for Charlie, "What exactly is this going to be anyway?"

"It's a mime mob," Charlie said, and when she was only greeted with blank stares, continued, "You know, like a flash mob, but with miming instead of dancing."

"Does this place exist in some alternative universe or something?" Paige asked with an excited gleam in her eye.

"Nah," Tuck responded. "It's just a liberal arts college."

Out of the corner of her eye, Emily saw Jo come around the corner of the building carrying a small, portable iPod speaker. She walked casually up to the table and sat down with everyone.

"Charlie, you should start filming now," Jo said very quietly, and then nodded her head toward the entrance to The Corn Husk, "in that direction."

Charlie nodded and held her camera up discreetly while Jo pressed play on the iPod. Emily recognized the song immediately. It was Beyoncé's  _Irreplaceable_. As the first lyrics rang out, a boy in suspenders at one of the tables near them stood up and began making large pointing motions toward another table. Each time, Beyoncé sang "to the left" another mime dressed in plain clothes stood up and pointed until finally, Eden appeared, walking out of the grill. Once she had made it to the middle of the patio, she mimed running into a wall and then promptly became trapped in a box. As the song continued, the other mimes tried various methods of breaking Eden out of the box (pick-ax, saw, grenade) while Eden did a sort of panicky, mime dance where she banged on the walls and screamed silently. Then, at the end, she mimed discovering a door at the back of the box and a key in her pocket. Eden ended the scene by moon walking off of the patio.

When Emily turned back around, Paige had tears streaming down her face from holding back her laughter.

* * *

 

The rest of the afternoon seemed to fly by for Paige. She was doing her best to pretend she wasn't leaving the next morning to go back to California. It was difficult, though, she could tell Emily was trying to follow her lead and not mention it either, but she was becoming more and more withdrawn as the day wore on. By the time the group headed to the cafeteria for dinner, Emily wasn't speaking much at all.

Paige felt bad, but she was trying to spend time with Tuck, too, and make sure he didn't feel neglected before she left. The last thing she needed was an angry brother to deal with when she made it back to Stanford. For the time being, Paige decided, she would focus on Tuck. Then, when he went back to his dorm later, she would spend time with Emily. All night if she had to. Paige hated the fact that she was, albeit unintentionally, the reason for Emily's obvious unhappiness.

After dinner, Jo suggested they watch a movie. Eden and Emily declined on the grounds that they had to do some homework. So while Paige sat in the living room pretending to pay attention to  _Drop Dead Gorgeous,_ Emily sat in the dining room and pretended to write an essay. It was a long two hours. Paige desperately wanted to talk to Emily, but at the same time, she had no idea what she was going to say. She didn't know what came next for them.

Finally, around 10:30 the movie and subsequent chatting ended and Tuck went back to his dorm. Paige hurried into the dining room, but the only person she found at the table was Eden.

"Where's Emily?" Paige asked Eden, glancing into the kitchen but not spotting her in there either.

"She said she was tired and went to bed like half an hour ago," Eden responded. "But she's not  _really_ tired. She's just sad you're leaving tomorrow."

"Did she tell you that?" Paige asked, surprised by how honestly Eden had responded.

"No," Eden told her. "I just know Emily and I didn't want you to think she was actually sleeping and leave her alone."

Paige smiled. She had figured that was the case, but it was nice to have her suspicions confirmed by someone who knew Emily so well.

"And Paige?" Eden said as Paige turned to head down to the basement.

"Yeah?" Paige turned back to the other girl.

"It's been nice for all of us, having you here," she said. "Everybody likes you a lot. You're more than welcome to come back and stay with us whenever you want."

Paige was quiet for a moment. She wasn't expecting such a genuine statement from a girl who'd spent the afternoon pretending to be trapped in an invisible box. Her heart swelled at the sentiment.

"Thank you," Paige told Eden. "I really like you guys, too."

Paige nodded a few times, more to herself than Eden, and then turned and left the room before she could ruin the moment with her awkwardness. She didn't often make friends so she didn't know now or if she should proceed with the conversation. It seemed better to leave it short and sweet.

Paige opened the basement door a crack and was met with a sound she wasn't expecting. She poked her head inside the door. The only light seemed to be coming from Emily's laptop and it was gently illuminating her face.

"Em?" Paige called down. "Can I come in?"

"Sure," Emily called out quietly.

Paige proceeded down the stairs carefully, so as not to trip on anything in the dark. Then she went over and sat down next to Emily on the bed.

"Really?" Paige asked, more sure of the sounds coming from the laptop now. "Christmas music? Halloween hasn't even happened yet."

"If you make fun of me," Emily told her stonily, "I will punch you."

"Em," Paige said, reaching out and touching Emily on the leg, "I can't help that I have to leave tomorrow. Please don't be mad at me."

"I don't listen to Christmas music when I'm angry," Emily said, her tone softening. She looked over at Paige, who leaned in quickly and captured her lips in a deep kiss.

"What do you listen to when you're angry?" Paige asked, moving her lips over to a spot underneath Emily's ear.

"That depends," Emily told her, sighing deeply as Paige's mouth moved against her, "on whether I'm trying to stop being angry or not."

"Mmmm," Paige responded, too busy to use real words.

Emily pulled back, however, before Paige could really start anything.

"Unless you've suddenly become ready for sex in the last 12 hours, I would suggest you figure out something else to do with that mouth of yours."

Paige laughed and looked at her with a mischievous gleam in her eye. "Do I really turn you on that much?" Paige asked her, settling for an innocent handhold now that she was no longer allowed to do what she really wanted.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Emily asked incredulously. "You make me so horny I can barely think. Any time you touch me, I'm ready to spread my legs for you."

Now Paige was getting turned on. "Fuck," she said, and then cleared her throat. "We need to think of a wholesome activity to engage in. Quickly."

Emily looked at Paige tentatively. Paige could tell she wanted to say something, but she just pulled up her iTunes and started playing  _Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas._

"This song was written for the movie  _Meet Me in St. Louis._ Did you know that?" Emily said to Paige.

"No. I've never seen it," Paige told her. "Is it good?"

Emily nodded. "Very good," she said. "It's old, made in the 40s. Judy Garland sings this song. She made the composers change the lyrics, though, because they were so depressing."

"What were the original lyrics?" Paige asked curiously.

"Have yourself a merry little Christmas, it may be your last," Emily told her.

"Okay, that's super depressing," Paige said. "Good thing they changed it."

"It's still there, though," Emily went on, "the sadness. You can hear it, in the melody, in the way Judy sings it. It's the saddest Christmas song ever written. I don't care, though. It's still my favorite."

"You like being sad?" Paige asked then, trying to wrap her head around why Emily would love this song so much.

"No, I don't  _like_ being sad," Emily clarified. "But when I am and I listen to this song, it makes me not feel so alone."

"Em…" Paige knew somehow that Emily wouldn't start the conversation they needed to have. Emily looked over at her with a mixture of hope and fear and sadness swimming in her eyes.

"When I leave tomorrow," Paige began, "I don't want things between us to go back to how they were before. I want to talk to you and text you. And maybe we could Skype sometimes, you know? I'm not ready for a girlfriend yet, but I want to keep getting to know you. I wanna keep moving forward."

Emily ran her hands though her hair and sighed. She had a sort of lopsided, appraising expression on her face.

"Fair enough," Emily said, finally.

"Fair enough?" Paige repeated. "That's the only response you have?"

"Well, I've been considering our situation and I don't think you're ready for a girlfriend yet."

"Ouch!" Paige said, but she was laughing. "Brutal honesty there, Em."

"Sorry," she said shrugging. "But you live 2000 miles away and you aren't even really out yet. It would be stupid for us to date right now, as much as I may want that."

Paige felt her heart flare up at this admission, but knew, at the same time, that Emily was right. "Are you saying you're going to wait for me to be ready?" Paige asked her grinning.

Emily laughed. "Mmm, no," she said, "but if we're talking all the time, I doubt I'll develop an interest in anyone else."

"I'll take it!" Paige said happily, and once again, leaned in to kiss Emily, who responded eagerly.

The two stayed up late, just talking and kissing and tying not to let things get too heated. Neither of them wanted to go to sleep and waste what little time they had left together, but, eventually, they dozed off around 3 am.

* * *

 

The next morning was hurried. Paige woke up late and had to rush to take a shower and pack before she and Tuck walked over to the train station. She gave all the girls a general goodbye as Tuck shooed her out the door. It broke Emily's heart. She knew they'd said their goodbyes last night for the most part, but she still wished she could have had one moment alone with Paige before she left.

Emily had just turned her back on the door when she heard it burst open again. Paige spun her around where she stood and kissed her hard, right in front of everyone.

"This was the best week of my life, Emily," Paige told her boldly, holding Emily's face in both of her hands and looking her right in the eye. "This isn't it for us, I promise."

Emily beamed. "I'll see you soon, Paige," she told her, refusing to get too sappy about the girl leaving. "Now go before you miss your train!"

Paige kissed her, on the very tip of the nose, and then ran out the door again.


	29. The Calm Before November

When Paige arrived back at her dorm at Stanford, she felt like she was walking into an old, poorly scripted movie. The entire trip she had felt sick to her stomach with a strange anxiety she couldn't exactly place. She felt like she was forgetting something, or she was late. Neither or these things were true, however. She made her train in time and then successfully navigated Chicago and the El and made it to the airport in plenty of time. Paige couldn't help but think that if she were on her way  _to_  Illinois, this would have been something of which she was proud, but as she was leaving, she had only felt a little disappointed that she didn't get helplessly lost and need to be rescued by her brother and Emily.

Carly, Paige's roommate and a fellow swimmer, was sitting at her desk and reading when Paige arrived.

"Hey, welcome back! You look older…wiser," Carly told her, laughing.

Paige couldn't help but smirk at the comment; Carly had meant it as a joke, but it was startlingly true.

"You have no idea," Paige said, vaguely, throwing her bags down and collapsing on her bed.

"You okay?" Carly asked, glancing over her shoulder, and then looking back down at the Physics book she was studying from.

Paige looked over at her, about to answer, but Carly had already started reading again. Paige didn't answer and Carly didn't ask again. Instead, Paige rolled over onto her side, facing her blank bedroom wall, where the picture of Emily, Jo, Charlie, and Eden had once been taped. A few tears rolled out of the corner of her eye and dripped onto her bedspread. Paige closed her eyes and tried not cry until she eventually fell asleep.

* * *

 

When Paige woke up, the room was dark. For a moment, she wasn't sure what had woken her, but then her phone buzzed in her pocket again. She fished it out, rubbing her eyes sleepily with one hand. Her mouth had that fuzzy, stale feeling that it always got when she cried herself to sleep, worsened perhaps, by the fact that she had done so in complete silence.

The text was from Emily. "Did you get home okay?" she asked.

"Yeah," Paige typed out. "I kept feeling like I forgot something, though." She thought it would be a little too heavy in text to explain that Stanford was definitely not her home, but a place she was being held captive by a free education and a swimming pool.

Emily answered quickly. "You did." Accompanied by a picture of Emily wearing Paige's Vallance sweatshirt. It took Paige a moment to realize she was referring to the sweatshirt, however, and not to herself.

"Should I mail it to you?" Emily asked.

"No," Paige replied. "You should hang on to it. It'll give me a reason to come back soon."

"I didn't realize you needed a reason," Emily sent.

"Sorry. Should've said ANOTHER reason," Paige responded.

"It smells like you," Emily said.

"I should hope so," Paige typed, and then added, "Glad you haven't invited another girl into the basement to wear it yet."

"I only invite girls down if they call me from my stairs and make me eggs benedict," Emily's response read.

Paige smiled and felt a little more at ease, knowing she still had Emily, at least in some way. As she got ready for bed properly, she mentally buckled down, determined to make it through the school year and make sure she kept Emily's interest as well.

* * *

 

Things went well for a couple of weeks. Paige spent her days going to swim practice and class, doing homework whenever she could squeeze it in. And at night she would talk to Emily. Sometimes they would text or talk on the phone, and a couple times they used Skype, too. On one Friday night, Emily had even brought her computer in to the living room and Paige played Trivial Pursuit with the rest of the girls. She wasn't really happy, but she was getting by.

The only problem with this set up was that Paige didn't have much time for anything else. She was using all of her free time to do things she would normally have had time to do at night so that she could talk to Emily. Paige was sure that she could be juggling things more efficiently, but she was new at all this, so she was still trying to figure out how to fit everything in that was important to her. Still, she was dropping the ball on some important things.

The day before Halloween, Paige was spending her free afternoon doing laundry, writing an essay, and trying to organize a Halloween mixer for the swim team, which she had volunteered to do the month before but now wishing she hadn't. She was in the middle of moving a load of t-shirts into the dryer and calling a girl on her team named Lola to make sure she was buying the decorations for the party, when her phone beeped, letting her know she had another call coming in. Paige pulled the phone away from her face for a moment to see who was calling her.

"Lola, I don't care what color of streamers you buy. Halloween is kind of self explanatory," Paige told her, quickly. "I have to take this other call. Use your best judgment. Bye."

Paige switched over to the incoming call and answered.

"Hey Grandma! How are you?"

"Well, hello, dearheart. I'm just checking in," Grandma Hazel said. "I haven't heard from you since your birthday. I was starting to worry."

"God, I know. I'm so sorry," Paige told her, feeling extremely guilty. "I've sucked lately. I've just been so busy."

"That's alright. I know you've got a full load with school and swimming," Grandma Hazel told her warmly. "But I do miss my granddaughter. How was your visit to Illinois? I talked to Tuck a few times, but he said I should ask you!"

Paige smiled at the question. "My visit was really, really good," she gushed. "Actually, I'm kind of dating someone now. Well, it's not really official. I don't know. We're kind of just taking it slow."

"That's wonderful!" Hazel said, and Paige could hear the smile in her voice. "So is a nice young man or a nice young woman having the pleasure of your company?"

Paige laughed at the question. How she could have ever worried her Grandma would judge her seemed silly to Paige now. "It is a very nice young woman. You know, Emily, who I told you about?"

"I wondered if that's who it was," Hazel said. "I'm very happy for you, sweetheart."

"Thanks Grandma," Paige told her, taking in how good it felt to tell someone about her and Emily, even if it was only that they were unofficially dating. "She's really wonderful. Don't tell Mom and Dad yet, though. I'm still trying to figure out how to tell them about all this. "

"You know, it just takes baby steps," Hazel told her encouragingly. "It does not matter how slow you go as long as you don't stop. I think someone famous said that."

"Um, yeah, I think that was Confucius," Paige said.

"There, see? You'll get there in the end if you keep plugging away," Hazel told her, laughing jovially.

The sound of her Grandma's laugh filled Paige with warmth and hope for the future, but it also made her feel even worse for not calling her in so long.

"I'm so sorry I haven't called, Grandma," Paige said, apologizing again. "I've just been trying to figure out how to do everything I normally do  _and_  have time to talk to Emily. I don't want to lose her when we've only just started whatever this is between us."

"You know, your grandfather had to leave just after we were married, when he was drafted," Hazel said. "It wasn't easy to have him so far away, but we managed. I'm sure you'll make it work if this is what you want."

Paige knew that her Grandpa Frank had spent a short time in the Navy during World War II, but she hadn't heard her Grandma talk about it in this context before.

"Where was he sent?" she asked curiously. "I don't think you've ever told me."

"He was sent to a Training Station called Farragut in Idaho for basic training," Hazel told her. "I stayed behind here with my folks while he was there."

"What did you do, while he was gone?" Paige asked her.

"I wrote to him. Nearly every day," Hazel said. "I didn't even send some of the letters to him. Some of what I wrote, well, I wouldn't have even called them letters."

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, you know, some mornings, I'd be drinking my coffee, reading the paper, and I'd forget he wasn't there, sitting at the table with me. I'd turn to say something to him, about what I'd read, or about what I was doing that day," Hazel told her, "and of course, the chair would be empty next to me, so I'd write it down instead. I started carrying around scraps of paper, just so I could write down all those little things you say to someone every day. It helped just to get it down, to get the words out of my mouth in some way."

"That's so sweet," Paige said. "Did you ever give them to him?"

"Well, we were luckier than many. Frank didn't even get drafted until just about a year before the War ended," Hazel said to give Paige some context. "He found them, actually, one day, about a week after he came home. When I told him what they were, he took the whole box of them and forbid me from ever throwing them away. They're still around here, somewhere."

Paige could picture her Grandma sitting in the breakfast room, turning around in her chair, and trying to think where that box of notes might have been stashed.

"It almost sounds like text messages," Paige mused.

"You kids have it much easier these days," Hazel said. "There's all sorts of ways to keep in touch with someone now. See? You'll be all right."

"Yeah, I think I will be," Paige responded, suddenly feeling a lot less stressed. "I promise I won't go so long again without calling you, though."

"I'm glad to hear it!" Hazel said happily. "I miss our conversations."

"I love you a lot, Grandma," Paige said.

"I love you, too, dear. I'll let you go now and get back to what you were doing. We'll talk again soon."

"Yes," Paige reassured her grandma, and herself, "we will. Bye, Grandma."

* * *

 

The next day, Paige only had one class in the morning, after which, she and the some other girls from the swim team spent a couple hours decorating the house where they were holding the Halloween party in that night. Paige was going as a pirate. She'd bought one of those pre-packaged, overpriced costumes from one of the party stores in town, but honestly, she wasn't putting much effort into her costume compared to most of the other girls. They were all dressing to impress; those who were single were hoping to catch the eye of some of the male swimmers who would be there that night. Paige, on the other hand, was trying to avoid catching anyone's eye. Especially those of the males.

Everything turned out pretty well. Lola, whose house it was, had picked some cool decorations and one of the other girls had bought one of those cheesy CDs with "spooky" sounds on it. At the end of the day, it was a normal Halloween party, though. Nothing special, Paige decided, when she walked in that night. She was only there for about two hours. She danced some and drank her fair share of beer, but when a blonde guy, who Paige thought was named Stu, came over and tried to chat her up, she pretended like she was going to puke, then ducked out and went back to the dorm.

When she got back to the room she pulled out her phone and called Emily, who answered after the first ring. Due to the time difference, it was pretty late in Illinois, so Paige was a little surprised at the prompt response.

"Paige," Emily said huskily. "I'm in a seashell bra right now."

Paige laughed. She could hear that Emily was pretty drunk just by the sound of her voice.

"That sounds lovely," she replied, still laughing. Emily had already told her about her mermaid costume, so she wasn't surprised by this information. "And how is your fin doing?"

"Ugh, it was too hard to walk in, so I took it off," Emily huffed.

"So you're walking around campus in a seashell bra and your underwear?" Paige questioned.

"No!" Emily replied laughing. "Eden had some old sheets, so we tore them up and wound them around my legs and stuff, mummy-style. I'm a mermmy! Get it?"

Paige laughed along with Emily as she completely lost it over her mermaid/mummy joke.

"You are ridiculous, you know that?" Paige said, shaking her head.

"I'm just misunderstood. All the great artists are under appreciated when they're alive," Emily said, in a haughty tone. Paige couldn't tell if she was being sarcastic or not.

"I wish I could see your dumb costume and unwrap you," Paige told her, licking her lips at the thought. "Actually our costumes sort of go together. Pirates fuck mermaids, right?"

"Mmmm, I think you're thinking of sirens," Emily told her, slurring slightly. "And they lure them in, but then they kill them and bash their ships up on rocks and stuff."

"Okay, then," Paige said laughing some more. "I was trying to be sexy, there, Em."

"Oh, baby! I'm sorry," Emily said, clearly too drunk for subtleties. "I'm not a siren, though! I'm a mermmy. Mermmies totally fuck pirates! We'd be so sexy together."

"There is no way I can take you seriously when you say the word 'mermmy,'" Paige chuckled. "You're lucky you're an adorable drunk."

"You're lucky you're not here," Emily replied, "cuz there would be a drunk mermy taking advantage of you."

"Where are you?" Paige asked, deciding to change the subject instead of attempting to explain that Emily's last comment made very little sense. "Are you by yourself?" She didn't like the idea of Emily wandering around alone when she was so drunk.

"No, Jo is here. She keeps giving me strange looks and trying to make me hang up," Emily told her, then said, "What?" her voice sounding a little further away, like she had turned her head. There was silence for a moment. "Jo says I'm making a fool of myself."

"You can tell Jo I don't care how drunk you are, I still want to talk to you," Paige told Emily, smiling.

"Paige says she doesn't care if I'm stupid!" Emily said loudly, obviously speaking to Jo, then let out a long sigh into the phone. "I think I have to go to sleep, Paigey," Emily told her. "We're like, two little blocks away from home now."

"Okay," Paige told her, wishing Emily wasn't quite so drunk, so that they could talk longer. "Sleep well, Em."

"You, too," Emily said in a sweet tone. "And look out for sirens, okay? No one gets to lure you onto sharp rocks but me."

Paige laughed. "I'll be careful. Bye."

After she hung up, Paige took off her costume and took a shower. She felt gross after the party. She always felt sticky and grimy after events like that, where she was stuck in a stuffy room with a bunch of drunk college kids. It wasn't really her scene. She preferred smaller crowds and activities that included laughter and talking. She preferred being at The Log with Emily and her friends, she admitted to herself as she climbed into bed.

* * *

 

Paige woke up the next morning to the sound of her phone ringing. She looked at the screen, saw that it was her mother, and silenced the call. She would just call her back later, at a normal hour, Paige thought, seeing it was barely 7 am. She'd just shut her eyes again, when the phone started ringing for a second time. Paige's eyes snapped open wider this time. Her mother rarely tried to get a hold of her in such a persistent manner, even when they hadn't spoken in a while. She got out of bed and took her phone with her to the hall before she answered so she wouldn't bother her hung-over roommate.

"Mom?" Paige said, answering. "What's wrong?"

A deep sigh met Paige's ear from the other end of the line and she was struck, oddly, in that early morning moment, by how she could recognize her mother simply by the sound of her breath. "Sweetheart, it's your grandmother."


	30. The Edge of the Precipe

"What?" Paige's voice came out in a broken, croaky whisper. "She's…is she…"

"No, Paige, just listen to me before you react," her mother told her calmly. She was aware of how apt Paige was of jumping to the worst conclusions. "Your grandmother had a very bad fall last night. Her right leg was broken in three places. She's about to go into surgery."

Paige's head was spinning. She felt like she was going to be sick or faint, or maybe both. She quickly sat down in the middle of the hallway she was standing in and leaned her head down between her knees while she continued to talk. "But, what happened? How did she fall? What was she doing?"

"Well, some trick-or-treaters came to the door last night," her mother began, "and she was hurrying to answer and she had a big bowl of candy in her arms. She just lost her balance and fell. It was lucky that it happened when it did because the family at the door heard her calling for help. The door was unlocked so they were able to stay with her until the ambulance arrived."

"What do you mean it was lucky?!" Paige shouted angrily. "How can you say that?"

"Paige, you need to calm down," her mother told her. Paige felt she was being annoyingly blasé about the whole situation. "I know that you're scared, but yelling at me isn't going to help anything."

"Well, how long is the surgery going to take?" Paige asked, unwilling to believe that grandma wasn't going to wake up and be fine at the end of all of this.

"If she pulls through," her mother said, "the doctor told us it could take up to 6 hours. She's very old, though, Paige. It's always a risk to put someone elderly under anesthesia."

"Stop talking about her like she's some random old woman we don't know! She's going to be fine!" Paige shouted again.

"Paige Hazel McCullers, I don't care how upset you are," her mother said in a harsh tone, "you will not speak to me like that. You are not the only one who's worried here. But it's not going to help anything if we panic before we know if she makes it through this surgery or not."

Paige's swirling emotions finally boiled over as her mother scolded her. She felt like she was 5 years old again. The whole situation was just too much. Tears—angry, sad, scared, confused, uncertain—one for every emotion coursing through her body began to spill out of Paige's eyes.

"I'm sorry, Mom," she stuttered out, trying to get a hold of herself once more.

"Deep breaths, sweetheart," her mother told her soothingly. Paige could almost feel her mother's hand rubbing broad strokes around her back, the way she always did when Paige was upset. "Circle, circle, breath," her mother chanted to her. It was an old breathing exercise Paige had picked up when she first started swimming as a kid, which had become a surefire way to calm and refocus Paige in almost any situation. After a few minutes of this, her head felt less like it was in the throws a monsoon and more like it was simply being covered in a cold, consistent drizzle.

"I have more I need to tell you when you're ready," her mother spoke into the silence that had settled between them on the line.

By this time, Paige was little more than a ball curled up on herself, her arms and head tucked between her knees, her phone pressed against her face by her forearm, and her hands clutching each other on top of her head. She felt like she was huddled in a bomb shelter, bracing herself for the next impact.

"Yeah," Paige spoke, finally. "Okay."

"If Grandma Hazel makes it through this, she's going to have a long road ahead of her. A long recovery, I mean. She won't be able to get around the way she used to," Paige's mother explained to her. "She won't be able to live by herself at the house anymore. She's going to need help. We're going to have to find a nursing home for her."

Just when she'd finally felt that she was successfully collecting herself again, Paige felt her head begin to spin wildly. Her heartbeat was frantic now.

"No," she spoke firmly. "No, no, no. Grandma can't go to live in one of those places!" Paige's head filled with the sad images and horrible smells from the last few years of one of her great aunt's lives. Paige knew in that moment that she would do anything to make sure that her grandma never had to live in one of those bleak, lonely places.

"Paige, your father has been talking to your uncles all morning," her mother told her, referring to her dad's two older brothers. "It's the only solution, I'm afraid. We have to consider everyone involved. You're uncles live further away so the burden would just fall to your father and I. There's the money involved if we were to hire someone to be at the house with her…besides, your grandmother wouldn't take kindly to us just barging in to the house with her. It's just not that simple."

"Is Dad there?" Paige asked, a wild idea coming into her head, calming her as nothing had before.

"Of course, he's right next to me," her mother responded.

"Will you put him on?" Paige requested, readying herself to convince her father to agree to her fledgling plan.

* * *

Emily cracked open one eye and stared into the usual dark of her room, her head throbbing. Something was buzzing. She reached for her phone, but when she grabbed it, it was still and silent. As she switched it on though, she saw, by the light of her screen, that there was definitely someone in her bed with her. Her blanket, though, covered the lumpy mass and she couldn't tell who it was. Emily's mind was reeling and she felt a little panic beginning to build in her chest. She could hardly remember how she'd even gotten home last night. Who the hell was in her bed? She sent out a little prayer into the universe that she hadn't done something truly stupid. Emily hoped that for some reason one of the girls had fallen asleep in her bed. Even as she hoped this, though, she strained her ears, and thought she could hear all three of her housemates chatting in the kitchen above her. It was Sunday, 10:30 am. They were all up there having pancakes. Emily stared at the body next to her and started to sweat. The buzzing started again and she realized that it must be her bedmate's phone ringing. Steeling herself for the worst, she kicked the person next to her.

"Uhhhh," a deep voice sounded next to her. "Don't!" The voice was muffled, but unmistakable. Emily sighed heavily, releasing the breath she'd been holding.

"Tuck," she said, throwing the top half of her body on top of the boy. "Why are you in my bed?"

"You really don't remember?" he muttered sleepily.

"Um," Emily vaguely remembered Paige's voice in her ear, the phone call coming back to her in bits and pieces, but it was the last thing she could recall. "No. The last thing I remember is talking to Paige."

"Well, we ran into each other just around the corner," Tuck explained, "and you demanded that I come home with you because…what was it you said? Oh, that's right. You needed a McCullers in your bed, apparently."

"Oh no," Emily said laughing. "I'm sorry. That's awkward."

"That's alright," Tuck told her, chuckling with her. "I'm pretty sure Paige would kill me if I turned you down and  _someone else_ ended up in your bed. You let me know whenever you need a bed buddy."

"Thanks for the offer. You're phone's been ringing, by the way," Emily told him as she moved off of Tuck's back.

"Turn the lamp on," Tuck said. "I don't even know where my phone is."

Emily switched on her lamp and couldn't help but let out another laugh as she took in the tousled haired Tuck sitting up now with the blanket still covering half of his body. He was still wearing his high-collared Dracula cape with white makeup smeared all over his face. They looked at each other for a moment, just shaking their heads.

"Nice seashells," Tuck told her, grinning.

"We're a hot mess," Emily told him, adjusting her bra and noticing she only had on underwear on her lower half. "Thank god it was you in the bed."

Tuck eventually located his phone laying on the side of his the bed with his vampire teeth. Emily slipped on some sweatpants as he turned the screen on and noticed his face fall, his eyebrows creasing with worry as he used one hand to untie the cape around his neck.

"What's wrong?" Emily asked, her mind immediately going to Paige.

"I'm not sure," Tuck said distractedly. "I…I've gotta go, Em," he said, standing up and heading for the stairs. "My mom called me six times," he tossed over his shoulder as he hurried up the stairs.

Emily exchanged her seashell bra for a loose t-shirt and quickly sent a text to Paige. She couldn't help but worry that something might have happened to her. She didn't want to sound clingy or overreact to something that hadn't even happened, though, so she decided to just ask how Paige was this morning and hope the other girl would answer quickly so Emily would know she was alright.

Emily made her way upstairs and was met by the sight of her three friends sitting together on the kitchen floor with plates of pancakes in their laps.

"Hey Em," Jo said, standing up and pulling out a plate of pancakes for her from the microwave. "They're still warm," she told her, handing the plate to Emily.

"What happened down there?" Charlie asked. "Tuck ran out of here like you offered to give him a blow job or something."

"Must you be so crude on Sundays?" Eden muttered, rolling her eyes. Charlie responded by stuffing her own forkful of pancakes into Eden's mouth. Eden scowled at her, but ate the bite anyway.

"No," Emily said sitting down to join the others. "He had six missed calls from his mom. I'm sure he was worried there was family emergency or something."

"Is Paige okay?" Jo asked with a worried look crossing her features as she turned to look at Emily.

"I don't know," Emily said, glancing at her phone as she said it. "I sent her a text, but she hasn't answered yet."

"Em, she's probably fine," Eden said grabbing her hand. "She's probably just dealing with whatever their mom called Tuck for, you know? But I'm sure nothing's happened to her. Tuck would have told you, you know he would."

Emily shook her head lightly. "You're right," she told Eden. Tuck knew how much Emily cared about Paige. He would have told her if the emergency was about her. With that thought calming her, Emily dug into her pancakes.

* * *

"Hi, honey," Paige's father said as he took the phone from his wife. "Are you alright?"

"Dad, I can take care of Grandma," Paige blurted out. "She can't go to a nursing home. She just can't. I can stay with her, at the house. I know she wouldn't mind if I was there. And I can help her. I want to."

"Paige, I appreciate what you're offering," her Dad began, "but you're place is at school. We'd never ask you to leave your life at Stanford."

"Dad, I want to leave," Paige said, the truth finally rushing out of her mouth like blood from a wound. "I hate it here, Dad. I'm miserable. I don't want to stay! Please! I can take care of Grandma. I want to."

"Honey, what are you talking about?" her dad asked, dumbfounded by what she'd just admitted to him.

"I've never liked it here," Paige said, starting to cry again. "I'm so lonely, Dad. But I was embarrassed and I had my scholarship. I was just going to stay and deal with it until I graduated. But now…"

"Paige, why didn't you tell us? You know we would've helped you figure something out."

"I just felt so stupid, Dad," Paige admitted. "Like I would come off as some ungrateful brat if I told you I wanted to go somewhere else. I'm sorry. I should've told you."

Her father let out a heavy sigh on the other side of the country. "I'm sorry, honey," he began when he spoke again, "but your education is the most important thing. Even if you don't want to stay at Stanford, you need to stay in school."

"I will!" Paige assured him immediately. "But why can't I just transfer to Philly's Community College and take classes part time while I help Grandma? You're wrong, Dad. My education is  _not_ the most important thing."

"You're not going to drop this, are you?" her father asked her wearily.

"It's too important to drop it," Paige said, but her voice was pleading with him still. "Daddy, I'd never be able to forgive myself if Grandma had to go live in some gross nursing home."

Paige hadn't called her father "Daddy" in about 10 years. She hadn't done it on purpose. It had slipped out because she was feeling so scared and alone and desperately sad. Nonetheless, hearing his daughter use this name for him after so long softened his resolve.

"If she makes it through surgery…" he said, trailing off as he thought of the very real possibility of his mother dying. He exhaled again loudly and began again. "If Mom makes it out of surgery, we'll start making arrangements for you to move back here and into the house with her."

"Thank you!" Paige said in a relieved shout. "Thank you, Dad."

"No, thank you, honey," her father said. "I didn't want that life for her either, you know. You're answering a lot of prayers right now, Paige, by offering to do this for your grandmother. I'm very proud of you."

"Well, she always took care of Tuck and I," Paige said, unsure how to handle the heaviness of what her father had just told her. Then she heard a shuffling on the other end of the line.

"Tuck is calling now, actually, so I'm going to have go," her father told her hurriedly. "We'll call again as soon as she's out of surgery. I love you, Paige," he said and hung up before she could even respond.

As Paige sat there in the hallway of her dorm, the weight of what she had just offered to do settled heavily on her body. She felt like she was sitting at the very edge of a precipice and looking over. She knew, somehow, that whatever happened, whatever came next, she would be repelling into this next phase of her life, in great leaps of descent, towards a bottom she couldn't yet see.

Paige wiped her face with the bottom of her t-shirt and noticed the text she'd received from Emily sometime during her call with her parents. Paige just had a feeling that, somehow, Emily knew that something was wrong. But Paige felt so far away from her, from everyone in her life, at this moment. Emily had asked her how she was, but in all honesty, Paige didn't know how to answer. She decided she might as well carry on with the truth, however, as she typed out her response.

* * *

On the floor of the kitchen in The Log, Emily's phone vibrated loudly against the tile where it was laying next to her. She grabbed it anxiously and read the response Paige had sent her.

"I don't know. I'll call you later," was all that Paige had responded with.

Emily stared at it numbly, the vague, distant response not doing anything to assuage her worries.

"Em?" Charlie asked.

Emily realized, as she looked up at the concerned faces of her friends, that she must have been making an expression of dread as she considered what Paige's response could mean.

"It was Paige, but…"she told them all in a hollow tone. "Something's wrong. I don't know what. She said she'd call me later."


	31. Subcutaneous

One summer, Paige's father had been offered a job at a church camp in Nebraska for two weeks. The camp was called Westminster Woods. Her father was actually a very outdoorsy man. Nick had worked at similar camps as a counselor when he was a teenager and college student and had even considered becoming a park ranger before deciding to go to seminary to get his Masters of Divinity and become a pastor. The camp was for kids between 8 and 12 years old, and the director had offered to let Tuck and Paige attend for free if their Dad accepted the job. The camp was Presbyterian, but was focused on teaching kids outdoor skills, which was where Nick had come in; how to paddle a canoe, how to build a fire, how to chop wood, how to identify plants and trees. Paige had loved everything about it; sleeping in the sparse cabin on the top of a bunk bed, singing camp songs after every meal, racing her friends to the lake every day to swim, taking the canoes out barefoot, running around with flashlights at night, and building camp fires to make smores. It was a small, simple camp with only about 20 campers, but Paige preferred it that way.

It was midweek when it happened, Wednesday or Thursday maybe. Paige had been goofing off with her best friend, who slept on the bunk opposite her. They were both in their beds and she was being careless and laughing at something when she rolled over and fell from the top bunk, landing hard on the wooden planks of the floor flat on her back. It was one of the worst things Paige had yet experienced in her short life. She'd never had the wind knocked out of her like that before. All she knew was that she couldn't breathe. She was suffocating; her lungs had cracked open inside of her and wouldn't hold air anymore. She was terrified; panic had quickly overtaken her.

The counselor, a woman whose name Paige had long since forgotten, was able to calm her down enough to realize that she could still breathe. Paige wanted her father, though, and she had started to cry, so the counselor sent the other girls to fetch Nick from his cabin on the other side of the camp. They had flown out into the night, those nine girls, like a flock of geese, the very air seeming to split apart as they ran, screaming for Nick, yelling that Paige was hurt, that she had fallen out of her bunk. Paige could hear them from where she felt buried half way in the floor, for minutes after they'd raced out the door.

When Nick arrived, he scooped Paige up into his arms and held her while she cried. She wasn't hurt, just scared, and he knew that. Paige could still recall the feel of her father's stubble under her small hands as he cradled her and spoke softly in her ear to calm her down. After Paige had stopped crying, Nick had moved her bedding on to the lower bunk and helped her into bed. The he told her a story about a dog named Mike, the way he did at home, until she was asleep.

* * *

Paige was sitting, catatonic, still in the hallway outside her dorm room. It felt the same, exactly the same as when she'd fallen out of her bunk that summer. She was sinking into the floor, unable to move or breathe, just waiting for her father to come and rescue her, to make this scary experience dissipate with his mere presence. She wanted to put her hands on his unshaved cheeks and hear him tell her that everything would be all right. Somewhere, lost in this haze, Paige's phone buzzed against her palm. It was Tuck.

"Call me. Now," the text demanded of her. She clicked the screen back off, however. She didn't feel like talking to anyone right now. Not even her brother. Her chest felt tight as her thoughts drifted back to the voices that had once screamed out into the silence of a Nebraska evening, bringing her father to her. Paige wished desperately that she had a flock of women to vocalize her fear for her now.

Some minutes later, her phone buzzed again. This time it was Emily, answering her last text.

"Please do," it said, in reference to Paige calling her later. "I'm worried about you."

Paige stood slowly after she read it, resigned to the fact that no help was coming, and moved back into the safety of her room, hoping to clear her head a little.

Carly was just waking up, moving around her side of the room, getting ready for the day. It was Sunday, Paige remembered, but Carly usually went to church. Usually, Carly's habit of getting up early and waking Paige on the only day of the week she was able to sleep in annoyed the crap out of her. Just this once, Paige was thankful. She would much prefer to be alone just now.

"You're up early," Carly said in greeting, glancing at Paige, who was sure the sadness wafting off of her was about to set off the fire alarm in the building.

"Yeah, I had a shitty morning," Paige said. "Sorry if I woke you."

"No, you didn't," Carly responded. "I'm meeting Evan in a few so we can grab some breakfast before church." She seemed completely oblivious to anything happening in Paige's life.

 _Just as well,_ Paige thought as she sat down numbly at her desk and opened her laptop to look up possible flights for the next two days and spared a few moments to wonder who her father had been able to call in last minute to cover his church service.

Her phone buzzed again. She glanced at it briefly, expecting it to be Tuck chastising her for not calling him during a family crisis. She had to do a double take, though, and look down at the screen more carefully to make sure she was reading it right. Acts of kindness always caught Paige off guard.

"Hey Paige," the text read. "I hope you're okay. I'm here if you need anyone to talk to or if you need anything else. Just let me know."

Paige thought the smoke-like sadness around her must have thickened because her vision had blurred as she read the text, but as she blinked, she realized it was because tears had welled up in her eyes.

Immediately after she'd taken in this text, her phone buzzed again.  _Another one?_ Paige thought as she tapped on the new message, but it was from a different sender.

"Yo, I'm praying for you and your fam," this one said. Brief but genuine, Paige acknowledged, the smallest of smiles flitting across her face.

Another text streamed into her phone from across the country. Paige could picture them all bent over their respective phones and eating their pancakes as she read this one.

"Paige, when tragedy strikes, I always sing  _Que Sera, Sera_  made famous by the great Doris Day. You know what? I'll just post the video of her singing it from  _The Man Who Knew Too Much_ on your facebook. Don't' worry, it's very uplifting."

Paige laughed aloud at this last text, tears streaming freely down her face.

"Someone's popular!" Carly threw out from her desk where she was applying makeup. Paige just stared incredulously at her roommates face, reflected at her from the mirror Carly had leaned against a stack of books. This woman who was sitting mere feet from her had not noticed her tears and had no idea that she was in the throws of emotional turmoil. Yet, Jo, Charlie, and Eden, 2000 miles away and with no real information on what was happening with her grandmother, were more in tune with what was happening in her life.

Emily had sent one more text, Paige noticed, as she looked away from Carly's unintentional callousness.

"You are so strong, Paige," Emily said. "And infinitely more loved."

Grandma Hazel had a mantra that she had often repeated to Paige over the years when someone picked on her at school or the girls at church bullied her.

"Kill them with kindness," Hazel had said, with no further explanation, except for the occasional wink. Paige had believed, up until this very moment, that she understood what her grandma was saying to her when she told her this, that it was merely a tactic a person could employ to make their enemies feel guilty. But that wasn't it, at least not entirely, Paige realized. Sitting there at her desk, she felt absolutely slain.

* * *

In Illinois, Emily was washing the dishes to keep herself busy while she waited for Paige's call. The girls were milling around behind her, putting away the remains of their breakfast. Emily glanced back at them, though, when she felt their movements still. They were all standing in a huddle, working intently on something on their phones.

"What are you guys doing?" Emily questioned.

"Texting Paige," Charlie responded distractedly as she typed. "Duh. She needs her friends."

* * *

Paige was not a person of many possessions. Her parents were the kind of people that performed rigorous spring-cleaning every year, without fail. Part of this annual event in the McCullers household always involved Tuck and Paige meticulously sorting through all their possessions and deciding what they absolutely needed and what they did not. What was deemed unnecessary was donated to Goodwill. While this lifestyle had undoubtedly instilled in Paige many good qualities, it also gave her dorm room a rather bleak atmosphere.

She had a few framed photos on her desk: a typical, family portrait of Paige, Tuck, and their parents wearing brightly colored sweaters and blue jeans while posed in an outdoor, autumn setting; one from the back of Tuck and Paige on either side of her grandmother while she played the piano and they all sang; a snapshot of the family dog, Duke, dragging a tree branch through the backyard; the last was Paige's favorite and it pictured herself, looking thoroughly annoyed, and Tuck, thoroughly elated, in the crowd at a Jonas Brothers concert. Paige had also pulled back out the photo of Emily and her friends in the snow and it was leaning, frame-less, by the others.

Paige had a paperback set of the Harry Potter books, though, no one knew that's what they were because at some point during her adolescence, she had felt the need to cover them all in duct tape. Her parents had offered to buy her a new set numerous times after she'd outgrown this phase, but they were still readable and that was really all Paige cared about. She also had an old Betty Crocker cookbook that had belonged Grandma Hazel until she had given it to Paige. She had a plain black Bible, which she hadn't opened in about two years, a copy of  _Little Women_ ,  _The Cider House Rules_ , and her favorite novels from childhood,  _Where the Red Fern Grows_  and  _The Hobbit_. She read each of these (other than the Bible and the cookbook) at least once a year.

Paige had two posters. One was of the chocolate factory scene from  _I Love Lucy_. The other was map of the continental United States with tacks stuck in it to show where she had traveled. There weren't many tacks, yet, but most of them were clustered in the northeast from the various road trips she and Tuck had taken in high school.

She had a thick black binder where she kept her vast movie and television show collection. This was the only area of her life that Paige felt she probably had more than she really needed, but she only ever kept the discs themselves and recycled the cases the moment she bought them. That was how she justified the excess in her mind, anyway.

Paige's collection of Batman comic books was stored in a plastic tub under her bed. She had an iPod dock that doubled as speakers and an alarm clock. She had a lamp and a green bowl that she kept her keys and loose change in. She also had a teddy bear named Jolene that she kept squashed underneath her pillow so no one would see it and find out she still slept with her childhood teddy bear

The rest of her possessions, other than clothing and personal care items, consisted of school and swimming paraphernalia—text books, notebooks, pens and pencils, swim caps and googles.

After Carly left for church with her boyfriend, Paige, remembering that she still had at least 5 hours to kill, decided to pack. She went down to the basement of her dorm to the area where the recycling was sorted and located some sturdy boxes. She took them upstairs along with a few neglected newspapers. Paige found a small amount of hope in the fact that somewhere in this sea of electronic media that was so readily available at all hours, there was a kid who was still regularly buying newspapers somewhere in her building.

Back in her room, she began to wrap her worldly possessions in the news; the tragic and sad stories of death, the obituaries, the bombings and drownings. But there were also the comics and the weather forecast, a list of upcoming concerts, and the horoscopes. It only took three cardboard boxes and two peeled apart papers to pack everything she wouldn't be putting in her suitcases.

When Paige finished, her hands were gloriously dingy with the smudged ink from the newspapers. It made her think of her grandparents reading the paper every morning at breakfast. It made her think of Emily, the inkiness that was inherent to her. It made her want to get a tattoo. Paige stared at her blackened hands for a long time.

For what seemed like the hundredth time that day, her vibrating phone pulled her from her reverie. For a moment, her heart leapt into her throat, thinking it might be her mother or father calling to give her bad news, but it was just Tuck. He'd finally run out of patience with her, apparently.

Paige took a deep breath, ensuring the functionality of her lungs, and answered.

"Hey," was all she got out before Tuck started in on her.

"Are you fucking serious, Paige? You're just going to drop out of Stanford. STANFORD. So you can move back home and go to community college?" He was yelling.

"Don't start, Tuck, okay?" Paige snapped back at him. Not even her grandma possibly dying at this very moment could make Paige back down in a fight with her brother. "You have no idea how unhappy I've been."

"Well, that's your own fucking fault isn't it? I didn't realize you were keeping so much from me!" Tuck said accusingly. "You're telling me you don't like being on one of the best swim teams in the country?"

"It's literally the only thing I like about being here. It's just not enough," Paige muttered dejectedly, the fight trickling out of her, shame filling her body instead.

"You have a full ride, for fucks sake!" Tuck yelled.

"You think I don't know that? You think I don't feel horrible enough about this already, you prick?" Paige was getting riled up again, her emotions peaking and dropping rapidly as she paced around her room. "I'm about five seconds away from hanging up on you, so if there was anything else you wanted to talk about, oh, I don't know," Paige quipped sarcastically, "like our dying grandmother, you should say something now!"

"She isn't dying," Tuck said in a lower voice. "She's going to be fine. There's no way that a broken leg is going to kill Hazel McCullers. She's too strong for that."

"Well, I'm glad you're so fucking sure about that," Paige spat back at him. "Nothing ever phases you, does it?"

"I think the more pressing matter is that you're about to ruin your entire future because you can't figure out how to make any friends," Tuck said, triumphant in the silence that answered him on Paige's side of the line telling him he had hit the nail on the head.

"You're such a…" Paige stuttered, finding her voice again, and angrier than ever. "…a…"

"Yes?" Tuck chided her.

"You're such a BUTTHOLE!" Paige screamed.

"You're a BUTTHOLE!" Tuck yelled back.

"Yeah, well," Paige said chuckling dryly, "at least I don't like fucking them!"

"Vaginas are disgusting and everyone knows it!" Tuck yelled.

"Says the TWINK!" Paige had lost it completely.

"DYKE!" Tuck threw back at her, equally past the point of caring what exactly he was saying to his sister.

"COCK SUCKER!"

"CARPET MUNCHER!"

"CUM GUZZLER!"

"I HATE YOU!"

"FUCK OFF!"

The twins hung up on each other at the same time, but of course, they didn't know that.

* * *

Tuck was fuming when he threw open the door of The Log and slammed it shut again behind him.

"GOOD LUCK!" he yelled at Emily and stomped upstairs to talk to Jo. He couldn't talk to Emily when he was so angry with Paige.

Emily wasn't sure what had just happened, or what Tuck had meant by that. She felt shell shocked.

"Do you want me to braid your hair?" Eden asked, giving Emily a sympathetic look from the other side of the couch.

"Will you straighten it first?" Emily said frowning sadly. Eden nodded at her. "Okay."

Emily moved to sit on the floor in front of Eden. As the girl behind her slowly straightened her black locks and then neatly joined all the strands into a loose French braid, Emily pulled her computer onto her lap and started composing an email to Paige.

* * *

After her fight with Tuck, Paige had laid down on her bed in a huff and drifted into a fitful sleep. When her phone rang loudly into the half-empty room, Paige sat up, disoriented, her heart pounding. Her eyes searched frantically for her phone. She couldn't remember where she had put it after talking to Tuck and she felt confused being jarred from sleep so suddenly. Finally she spotted it on her desk and leapt up to grab it.

"Dad?" she said groggily as she answered.

"Are you alright, honey?" Nick asked, hearing that something was off in his daughter's voice.

"Yeah, I just fell asleep waiting for you to call back," Paige explained. "Is she okay?"

"You grandma made it out of surgery just fine," he assured her, then paused for a long moment. "Paige, are you sure you want to move in with her? You've had a few hours to think about it now. I'll understand if you've changed your mind about it. This is a big decision."

"No…no," Paige said quietly. "I'm sure. I can't stay here, Dad. I think this is what I'm supposed to do. I just…feel it in my heart."

"I know what you mean," he told his daughter gently. "Okay, so here's what we're going to do. Tomorrow morning, I'll call Stanford and explain everything. I'll take care of getting you officially un-enrolled and see if there's anything Stanford can do to make your transfer to CCP easier. You need to talk to your Coach, though, and apologize to her."

"Yeah, I know," Paige said, already dreading the conversation she would have to have with Coach Yarbrough.

"I'm assuming you looked into some flights?" Nick asked, knowing his daughter as well as he did.

"There's a red eye tomorrow that I can take," Paige told him. "Southwest Airlines, Flight 521. It'll give me time to pack and ship my extra boxes tomorrow."

"521, you said?" Nick asked. Paige could tell he was writing the information down so he could buy her ticket as soon as they hung up.

"Yeah," Paige assured him. "Thanks, Dad."

"You know what I was thinking about today while your grandma was in surgery?" he asked her. "Do you remember that time you fell out of your bed at camp?"

Paige smiled so widely she thought her face might break apart.

"Vividly," Paige chuckled. "I'm sorry if I scared you that night. I'm sure that raising Tuck and I was no easy job. We're both pretty dramatic."

Nick laughed lightly, deep in thought. "Having children complicates your life with love," he told his daughter. "I'll email you that flight confirmation in a few minutes, honey."

"Bye Dad, love you."

"Love you, too."

Paige felt relief wash over her, and then immediately began to second-guess her decision to leave Stanford. What if Tuck was right, Paige wondered, and she was ruining her life by volunteering to become her grandma's caregiver? She'd never done anything like it before. Still, in the back of her mind, Paige felt sure that she would regret it more if she didn't do everything she could to keep Grandma Hazel out of a nursing home. That thought calmed her greatly as she opened up her computer to wait for her Dad's email.

When she opened up her gmail account, there was nothing from her dad, yet, but Paige did have an email from Emily, which she opened curiously, and began to read.

_Dear Paige,_

_The night we first met, you told me that maybe you would read some of my poetry someday. I told you that I thought you would, someday. Well, here we are. Someday is today._

_If I knew what was happening with you I might have been able to send you something to fit your mood, but that's alright. This is something I've been working on for couple weeks. Please call me soon._

_Yours, Em_

Paige scrolled down so that the entire poem was framed in her screen and read Emily's poem very slowly and carefully, trying to glean every bit of comfort from it that she could.

_Cutaneous_

_I do not believe in love  
_ _at first sight._

_I believe in albino peacocks  
_ _and watching_

_a person's face drain of all color in fear,  
_ _not of death,_

_but life. I believe in too much,  
_ _in regret, in missing._

_I do not believe in chemistry, in the well  
_ _stacked and numbered blocks._

_I believe in melanin, of its absence  
_ _in the iris that allows one to see_

_the blood behind the eye.  
_ _I believe in the red gaze and the slow_

_smoldering of bodies that do not  
_ _realize their wants. I believe in the apple,_

_fallen and rotting and in the avalanche of harvest.  
_ _I believe in gravity, not because I have fallen,_

_but because I believe in her  
_ _pull, and understand my whiteness,_

_my craters, the man living inside of me.  
_ _I believe in witch doctors,_

_and believe that they believe  
_ _that the bodies of albinos hold healing_

_powers. I believe in poachers  
_ _and what they sell_

_for those potions. I believe in  
_ _skin that is slowly leaving us,_

_the epidermis shedding  
_ _microscopic flakes every second, and could we_

_see, if our blood-hugged pupils could somehow  
_ _magnify everything, making love might be a blinding_

_snowstorm swirling around two bodies, terrified  
_ _embankments of union entombing them both._

_I believe in lovers' hands dislodging  
natural disasters from each other's sides._


	32. Re-moving Day

Paige had slunk out of Stanford like a dog with its tail between its legs. She couldn't remember ever feeling so torn about a decision concerning the direction of her life. Unlike most of the kids in her high school, Paige had only applied to three colleges and, when she left for Stanford, she'd been sure about what she wanted to do with her life. She was going to swim professionally for as long as possible and then try her hand at coaching. She had never been plagued with the uncertainties that usually accompany the transition from high school to college and adulthood. Now everything was a mess, or appeared to be so. In the past year, her entire being had been stirred into such a frenzy she would not have believed it if someone had told her this was what was waiting for her five years ago. It reminded her of a Jackson Pollock painting she had once seen at a museum. Everything seemed simple, almost childish, from far away, but the closer she got to the thing, the more intricate and layered and complicated it revealed itself to be.

Paige had loved Emily's poem. She was in awe of the beauty that Emily seemed to be able to spin from thin air. But Paige was wrecked with shame over leaving Stanford. She was embarrassed and to be quite honest, in the two days after receiving Emily's email, she was incredibly busy. Paige knew she was avoiding Emily, but she felt unable to stop or start herself into action either way.

Paige had been vague with everyone, save her swimming coach, who she'd felt she owed slightly more of an explanation. Coach Yarbrough had been extremely disappointed in Paige's decision to leave the school and the team and she didn't hide that disappointment from Paige. She had told Paige, point blank, that she was wasting her potential and that she was sure that Paige could have made it to the Olympics if she had put her mind to it. Paige was sure of only one thing as she left the coach's office that morning: the conversation they'd just had would haunt her for years, if not decades.

"I'm leaving school due to a family emergency." That was all she told Carly as she'd stuffed clothes and bathroom items into her rolling suitcase and giant duffel bag. In a fit of loyalty Paige didn't know she was capable of, Carly had offered to drive Paige to the airport. When Paige refused, Carly had grabbed her into a stiff and unexpected hug.

"You're a great swimmer, Paige," Carly had told her. "Keep in touch, okay?"

Paige could only nod perfunctorily and say, "Yeah, I will," as she hoisted the strap of her bag over her head and situated it on her shoulder. "Take care," Paige had said, her eyebrows creased almost painfully, her whole face twisted with some emotion she refused to examine, and then she'd left the room.

As it was about 10:30 pm, on her way to the airport Paige had dropped her keys off with one of the security guards stationed at Stanford's housing office. The interior of the building was barely lit by a few dim lamps as the portly, middle-aged man opened the door and led her down a hallway and into an office that seemed to be made entirely out of keys, hooks and labels lining all four of the walls. The place had a very eerie feel to it at night.

"You want this keychain back?" he's asked after having Paige fill out the necessary form listing her name, building, and dorm number and taking the two keys she'd handed to him.

"Oh," Paige had nearly forgotten it in her haste to leave. "Yeah, I do…"

He glanced at it as he handed it back to Paige. "Vallance? Never heard of it," he'd remarked.

"It's kind of small," Paige had said dismissively, taking the purple and gold plastic crest back and stuffing it into her pocket without looking at it as she left.

* * *

Nick had picked Paige up from the airport and, despite her lack of sleep, the two had spent most of the day at Grandma Hazel's house, rearranging furniture and getting the house in order for Hazel's eventual return. Paige had been surprised to hear that she would be moving into her grandparent's large room in the upstairs portion of the house.

"Honey," Nick had told her with a sad look, "your grandmother's not going to be able to climb these stairs anymore."

"It just doesn't feel right," Paige had confessed as she and her father had used a few cardboard boxes to move Hazel's photographs, jewelry, books, and various knickknacks into the downstairs bedroom Paige and Tuck had always stayed in.

"I know, but I talked to Mom this morning and honestly, Paige, she's just so thankful to be able to stay at home after she gets discharged from the hospital. She cried when I told her what you offered to do. Your grandma wants you to be comfortable here, too. Once we get your grandfather's old bed out of the room, it'll be almost like you have your own apartment up there."

Paige knew, from what her father had told her and the pictures that she'd seen, that Grandma Hazel and Grandpa Frank's house was just a one-story ranch style when they'd bought it nearly 50 years ago. After having three sons, however, they'd realized they were going to need more room, so they had added on a master bedroom with its own bathroom above the connected garage. It had seemed like an enormous space when Paige was a kid, but in truth, it was just a little larger than a two-car garage. For reasons Paige had never questioned until that day, her grandparents had slept in separate queen-sized beds for as long as she could remember. After Frank had died, Hazel had left his bed in the room even though it took up so much space. Paige assumed that it was as an extra bed in case of guests, though, she wondered as she and her father carried out the old mattress if it was because Hazel just couldn't bear to get rid of it. As Paige and Nick worked in the upstairs bedroom to dismantle Frank's old bed frame, Paige's curiosity got the better of her.

"Did Grandpa and Grandma always sleep in separate beds? Like, when you were a kid?" she asked her father.

"Oh heavens, no! They didn't start sleeping in separate beds until Dad had retired," Nick said, always eager to tell his daughter about family history, no matter how mundane it was. "Before this bedroom was built, your grandparents' room was what's now the den. They just had the one bed in there. Remember what I told you? The breakfast room was a bedroom, too. So there were the three bedrooms in the corner down there. When we remodeled, we opened up that wall between the kitchen and bedroom to make the breakfast room. We used to have a little kitchen table squeezed in there where the dishwasher is now."

"So why did they start sleeping apart?" Paige had asked, trying to imagine five people living in the close quarters her father had just explained.

"Retirement is supposed to be relaxing. Well, for most people I think it is. But not for Dad," Nick had said, chuckling a little as he loosened a stubborn bolt on the old bed frame with the wrench he was holding, then wiping his brow. "Let's take a break for a few minutes, honey," he'd added, sitting down on the floor and putting the wrench down.

"Grandpa didn't like retirement?" Paige had asked, joining her father on the floor.

"Oh, I think he liked some aspects of it," Nick had told her. "He loved to come to your school plays and functions. He loved being able to take care of you and Tuck and spend so much time with you. But, for 40 years he was a mail carrier. He spent five days a week walking around for eight hours a day. Do you remember how skinny he was?" Paige nodded laughing. "Well, after he retired, he was just so restless. He hardly knew what to do with himself. That was when he took up gardening, and that helped a little, I think, but he never slept well after that. And Mom never would have gotten any sleep either if they hadn't moved into separate beds. From what she's told me, he was up few couple hours, pacing the room, trying to get some of that energy out. You know how much your grandparents loved each other. It wasn't because they were having problems or anything like that. The same love, the same relationship, it can look very different over the years. I learned a lot from my parents about how to roll with the punches that life throws at you. How to keep things in perspective."

As Paige had listened to her father, she couldn't help but think of Emily, and imagine what it might be like to be with her for decades; what it would be like to tell their children and grandchildren the story of their love. Paige knew they were nowhere near that kind of commitment yet, but the images had danced at the corners of her mind nonetheless.

"I'm dating someone," Paige had said, spurred on by her thoughts, but surprising herself with the confession just as much as her father.

"Are you really?" Nick had said, a smile crinkling the corners of his blue eyes. "Honey, that's wonderful. Why didn't you tell us?"

"Well," Paige had said, picking up the wrench and fiddling with it nervously, "Um…it's a…it's a girl?" Paige wasn't sure why it had come out as a question.

"Oh," Nick had said, glancing to the floor, a faraway look in his eyes. He sat quietly for a minute or so, Paige watching him closely as a smile slowly lifted the corners of his mouth and he chuckled lightly. "Well, that explains a lot. I thought your teenage years were a little too easy. You never had any boyfriends around for me to intimidate."

"Dad!" Paige had yelled at his unexpectedly light-hearted response.

"I hope, for your sake," he'd added with a mischievous gleam in his eye, "that you've already told your brother. We don't need anymore head injuries in this family. Maybe you should put that wrench down..."

Paige had stared at her father, open-mouthed as he'd laughed at her expression. Paige had been stunned. Not only had her father reacted positively to the news of having another non-heterosexual child, but he was actually teasing her about it. As they had continued working to remove the extraneous furniture out of the house to make it more wheelchair friendly and install ramps in the garage and on the porch, Paige had told Nick about Emily and how she had been struggling to figure out who she was and what she was going to do with her life lately. Paige had been more honest with her father than she had been in her entire life. It had been the sort of conversation Paige couldn't even imagine herself even a year before.

Before leaving for the night, Nick had given Paige the keys to her grandmother's Buick and they'd arranged to meet at the hospital the next morning at 9. He'd even kissed her on the forehead and pulled her into a tight hug before he left. "I love you, honey," Nick had said. "Call if you need anything."

* * *

Now Paige was standing in her "new," half empty bedroom, alone, now that she thought about it, for the first time in her grandparent's house. That unsettled feeling was coming to rest in her chest again.

She walked around the room once, trailing her fingers along the yellow spines of the old National Geographic magazines that took up an entire bookcase, looking at her reflection in the speckled mirror of the wooden vanity Hazel had kept her makeup on for years, taking in the faded area rug that sat in the middle of the wood floor. Then she went into the empty closet, the contents of which she had moved to the downstairs bedroom, while her father had dismantled one of the two thick, wooden twin beds and moved it to the basement with Grandpa Frank's old bed frame and mattress. Paige pulled the cord for the light that was dangling in the middle of the closet and then drug her suitcase and duffel bag in. She just left them there under the light and went back out into the room and sat on the edge of the bed, running her hand over the scratchy acrylic bedspread.

"I really need to buy some new bedding if I'm going to sleep up here," she said out loud. "I can't sleep on this."

She knew every inch of this house so well, yet she always seemed to notice some strange object or quality about something she'd never noticed before every time she was there. Tonight, she noticed how truly outdated and itchy this bedding was. Paige felt so out of place in this house, where the flatware and most of the decks of cards were older than she was. Back at Stanford, she hadn't thought how weird it would feel to actually live in her grandparent's house. There was so much history already crammed into every inch of this place.  _Where do I even fit into all of this?_ Paige wondered.

A few moments later, Paige made a decision. She went into the closet and put on the first baggy t-shirt she ran across along with a pair of boxer shorts, grabbed her phone charger, phone, and toothbrush, turned out all the lights and headed downstairs.

She brushed her teeth quickly and then went into the small bedroom she and Tuck had slept in their entire lives whenever they stayed here. She was lucky that her father had taken apart the twin bed that was closest to the door because that was Tuck's bed. She climbed underneath the familiar blanket in the bed that was still sitting against the far wall, her bed, and pulled back the curtain on the window to look into the neighbor's side yard, the way she had done countless times before, and felt the slight, chilly draft seeping in through the edges of the window. A few moments later, she finally reached for her phone to call Emily.


	33. A Map of Myself

Emily was a mess. It was now Tuesday and she still hadn't heard from Paige. Tuck, after he had calmed down and had heard from his dad, had told all the girls what had happened with Grandma Hazel. However, Tuck refused, point blank, to tell Emily why he was so angry with Paige.

The radio silence from Paige had driven Emily through a wide range of emotions, but by Tuesday night, she'd settled into a low valley of defeat. When she got back from the scene shop, by herself, she had felt the strange urge to lie down on the dining room table and decided it was best not to fight it. She climbed on top of the dark wood table and moved on to her back, spreading her arms and legs out to each of the corners and watched the ceiling fan spin slowly on its lowest setting, just slightly stirring the hair around her face.

About half an hour later, Charlie came home, with her headphones in, walked quickly past Emily on the table and into the kitchen. Emily thought Charlie hadn't even noticed her, but a minute or two later, she felt Charlie standing in the doorway between the rooms and glanced over to see her slowly eating a Poptart and observing her friend.

"You look like a dead starfish," Charlie mused.

"Starfish look the same. Dead or alive," Emily said, not moving.

"I kind of wanted to talk to you about something," Charlie said slowly. "Well, I guess it's more like asking you something. But you seem kind of indisposed."

"I'm fine," Emily told her in an even voice. "This just seemed like the right place."

"For a thoughtful repose on why Paige won't talk to you?" Charlie threw out.

"Exactly," Emily said, thankful that it was Charlie and not Jo or Eden who had found her like this, as they would have forced her to share her feelings and gorge on ice cream or do something else therapeutic. "So…shoot. What's your question?"

"I just wanted to make sure you wouldn't be uncomfortable with me asking Eden out," Charlie said flippantly.

Emily wasn't exactly caught off guard by this question as she had always felt there was something different about Charlie and Eden's friendship, but she felt that Charlie's question deserved her full attention, so she sat up and looked over at Charlie, who was still munching on her Poptart, cool as a cucumber.

"Why would that make me uncomfortable?" Emily asked.

"Well, we all live together," Charlie said, her cocky grin splitting across her face. "If she says yes, we'll be having really loud sex, at all hours of the day. You KNOW Edie's gotta be a screamer."

"Oh totally," Emily agreed with Charlie's assumption. She was unsure why Charlie seemed to be acting like the whole thing was no big deal, but decided to play along until she figured it out. "How about we make a deal…I won't comment on the deafening sex you're sure to be having and you don't make any more snarky comments when you can hear my vibrator."

Charlie stroked her chin thoughtfully. "That seems fair," Charlie said nodding, "I'll just have to avoid being in the kitchen around 11 pm most nights."

"Charlotte this is exactly what I'm talking about!" Emily said, getting off the table. "No more shit like that."

"Honestly, Em, I think you get off more than I do," Charlie said smirking at her and then cowering slightly under Emily's angry stare. "Okay, okay. I'm sorry. In all seriousness, though, if this….happens…it could change the dynamic of our group. You know. It's been the four of us, as friends, for a while. I just wanted to keep you and Jo in the loop. Full disclosure."

"Thank you," Emily said genuinely, smiling at Charlie. "I doubt it'll change much, though. I'm not worried." Emily walked past her into the kitchen and started pushing around the contents on her shelf, trying to find something she wanted to eat.

"Em?" Charlie said behind her, and Emily was caught off guard momentarily by the rare vulnerability she heard in Charlie's voice. She turned around and was met with such a look of worry on Charlie's face that she immediately moved forward and put her hands on Charlie's arms.

"Charlie, what's wrong?"

"What if she says 'no?'" Charlie said, chewing the skin on her bottom lip and squeezing the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger. Emily recognized both gestures as things Charlie usually only did when Eden was opening a new show and Charlie was nervously waiting in the audience. Emily couldn't help but smile and shake her head.

"Charlotte Cole, anyone with eyes can see that Eden Renmark is in love with you," Emily told her, but Charlie still looked nearly sick with worry. "Look, in about 5 minutes, Eden is going to get home, and she's going to come in here and take that other Poptart out of her hand and help herself to it and look at you like you're the only person in the room. Because you are for her. Even Paige asked me if you two were together when she was here."

"Really?" Charlie seemed to value Paige's opinion as an outsider and more objective source. "What did you tell her?"

"I told her the truth," Emily said planting a kiss on Charlie's forehead, "that you two are in love."

Charlie beamed.

* * *

It was 9:30. Charlie and Eden were upstairs talking and Emily was laying flat on her back on top of the dining room table again. This time, however, she was on a very large piece of paper and Jo was tracing her entire body with a thick, black Sharpie.

"What's the point of this?" Emily asked.

"I read about this on the internet," Jo told her. "I really think you're going to like it. It's very artsy-fartsy, poet-y…whatever. You're going to love it. It's called Map of Myself. After I'm done tracing you, you draw on the inside like it's a map. Put a river where your spine is, or make your tits mountains…I don't know! Whatever you want. It's supposed to give a person a better understanding of…how they understand themselves? I think that's what the website said. Self discovery stuff."

Emily cocked one eyebrow and looked at Jo as she finished tracing her body.

"You're right," she conceded. "I do like that, but I think I did this project in kindergarten once."

"I told you," Jo said giving her a stern look and ignoring Emily's last comment. "You'll probably write like 20 poems while we work on these things. Now get up and do me."

Emily hopped off the table and grabbed another one of the giant sheets of paper Jo had brought home from the art department.

Just as Jo was lying down, though, Emily's phone rang. Jo shot up off the table, looking almost as anxious as Emily, who was pulling her phone out of her pocket.

"Is it her?" Jo said.

Emily nodded, seeing Paige's name appear on her screen. She glanced over at Jo.

"Well answer it!" Jo shouted at her.

"Okay! Shut up!" Emily said, taking a deep breath and turning her back to Jo as she walked into the kitchen. "Hello?" she said in a much cooler and composed voice.

"Hey…Em," Paige's voice sounded both guilty and nervous on the other end of the phone.

"Paige…" Emily was so relieved just to hear the other girl's voice that any anger she had still been feeling over Paige's three-day silence ebbed away immediately. "What happened? I was so worried about you."

"Tuck didn't tell you?" Paige asked, genuinely surprised and also relieved that Emily didn't sound ticked off at her. She thought for sure Tuck would've spoken to Emily about everything by now.

"He told me about your grandma, Paige. I'm so sorry," Emily said, noticing that she was sitting on the kitchen counter now, though she couldn't remember how she got there. "But he said that she's alright, that she made it through her surgery just fine and that with some rehab and time she'll even be able to walk again. But…well, he made it seem like something else happened, or…I don't know. He's just so mad at you, Paige. And if everything is okay, or is going to be okay, well…why wouldn't you have called me sooner?"

"Right," Paige said, taking in this new information. "Um, well, my parents, they wanted to put my grandma into a nursing home because she's not going to be able to take care of herself anymore. I mean, once she can walk again, she'll be able to do most things, but she's just going to need more help with cooking and cleaning and things like that. "

"Okay," Emily said to let Paige know she was still listening.

"I just…I couldn't let that happen."

"What'd you mean?" Emily said, unsure where Paige was going with this.

"There's stuff I haven't told you, Em," Paige said, realizing that she needed to explain her unhappiness at Stanford before she revealed she was no longer a student there.

"So tell me," Emily said, her heart racing, unsure what Paige could be talking about.

"I hated it at Stanford. I was so lonely, so miserable," Paige said, letting the weight of all her emotions spill out of her. "I don't know what I was thinking. I wanted to be brave and independent and go live in California all by myself, but…there was a lot I didn't take into account…like how much I suck at making friends. And how much I was going to miss my family. How much I would miss Philadelphia and the seasons changing and how familiar everything is. And then…then I went to Vallanace and I met you and saw…everything that I could have had. God, I would kill to have friends who love me the way yours do Em. And it all just piled up. When I got back here after my last visit, everything just felt a thousand times worse."

"Oh, Paige," Emily muttered, her heart breaking for the other girl.

"So, when I heard about Grandma Hazel, and what happened, and that they wanted to put her in a nursing home, well…I just couldn't bear the thought of her being in one of those places. Have you ever been in a nursing home, Emily?" Paige asked and Emily nodded, not really thinking that Paige couldn't see her, though it didn't seem to matter, because Paige just kept talking. "My grandma, she practically raised Tuck and I. She's been there for me through everything. She's always taken care of me. Always. In ways I can't even explain. So…I told my Dad I wanted to move home and take care of her, so she could stay in her house. I, uh…I dropped out of Stanford. I left late last night. I'm back in Philly now."

"You did what?" Emily asked, flabbergasted.

"I know it sounds bad," Paige began, "but I'm transferring to the community college here and I'm going to start taking classes again in January when the new semester starts. So I can just do school part time until Grandma is back on her feet…and everything…everything is going to be fine," Paige said, trying convince herself as much as Emily.

"But, you're future, Paige…your swimming…what are you going to do?" Emily said, despondently.

"I…I don't know yet. I'm still trying to figure that out," Paige told her. "I'm in a transitionary period."

"Transitionary isn't even a word," Emily replied.

"Well, I'm coining it then," Paige said, trying to get Emily to laugh. "Em, I know how this all sounds, but.."

"It sounds like you just gave up," Emily said, before she could filter herself. "God, Paige, I don't know. I think you might end up regretting this."

"Why does every one keep saying that?!" Paige yelled. "God! I have been  _so_  stupid. I even told my dad about you tonight. You know what? Just forget it, Emily. I thought you would be the one person who would be on my side, who would understand why I did this." All the doubts and fears that had been coursing through Paige for the past three days finally boiled over. "You think I haven't thought of all that? That maybe I just fucked everything up for myself? I didn't make this decision lightly, okay?"

"You sure made it quickly," Emily retorted, her natural response to go on the defensive when anyone yelled at her. But she was immediately kicking herself for the statement. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean that. I know this was probably a hard decision for you."

"Probably?!" Paige was completely incensed now. "You don't just abandon the people you love! There are more important things than school and fucking swimming, Emily! People should be taken care of, not just shoved in some shitty nursing home when they get old!"

"Paige, that's not what I was saying! I'm just worried for you," Emily tried to explain. "I want you to be happy!"

"Well, you know what would make me really happy?" Paige was going full throttle now. She could feel it, she knew she was heading toward saying something she would regret, but she couldn't stop herself. Paige was so tired. She had flown clear across the country just the night before. She was anxiety ridden and worried sick over what had indeed been a enormous, hasty decision. And now she felt like all she had done in the past few days was defend herself for making what she had believed was an extremely brave decision. "What would make me happy would be for you to just leave me alone! Alright? Let's just forget the whole thing, Emily. You're clearly not the person I thought you were."

"Paige, come on," Emily was panicking now. Things had gone from bad to worse more quickly than Emily had thought possible. "You're just…you're misunderstanding me. Please don't say that. Paige, we've barely started…you can't…"

"Bye, Emily."

"Paige! Wait!" Emily screamed. But Paige had already hung up. The other side of the line was completely silent. Tears were sliding down Emily's cheeks as she stared at the screen of her phone that flashed a quick CALL ENDED before it went dark in her palm. "Damn it! God damn it!"

* * *

"Fuck! Why am I so fucking stupid?!" Paige yelled into the empty, dark house, already wishing she could take back everything she'd just said to Emily, but feeling that familiar, self-preserving pride beginning to flow into her veins as well like spreading poison.


	34. Welcome to Tribberville

To her surprise, when Paige woke up, she had five text messages from Emily.

The first said, "I'm not going to let you push me away."

The next said, "I'm sorry. I should have been more supportive. I was just shocked when you said you left Stanford."

After that was, "You're the girl of my dreams. I can't just leave you alone."

The fourth text said, "I'm not afraid to play dirty to get you to forgive me."

The last text was a picture of Emily's boobs and it immediately made Paige flush, heat coursing through her body, and feel more than willing to forget last night's conversation. But then she noticed something. She could see both of Emily's hands, lifting up her shirt in the picture. Emily definitely hadn't taken this picture herself. Paige shook her head knowingly. She laughed dryly as she tried to imagine the scene that must have taken place while the girls worked together to help Emily get the perfect boob shot. Paige just had no frame of reference for friendships like that.

"Fuckin' Charlie," Paige murmured, assuming she was the most instrumental in taking the photo.

There was also another text that said, "Way to go moron." But that was from Tuck. Clearly, his attitude toward Paige had not yet softened. Paige couldn't help but feel like she always got the most attention when she wanted it the least.

As she got up and got ready for the day – showering, getting dressed, eating breakfast—Paige kept pulling her phone out and staring longingly at Emily's tits, biting her lip and tilting her head as she lost herself in them. She felt like they were putting her in a trance. It was so hard to stay mad at someone whose nipples had been in her mouth less than a month ago. Finally, just before she left the house, Paige responded to Emily's text.

"I can't believe you let Charlie take a topless picture of you," Paige replied, deciding not to show just how weakened her resolve had become over one picture of Emily's breasts. After pressing send, Paige hopped in her grandma's old, grey Buick Town and Country and headed to the hospital.

It only took her about 15 minutes to drive to Philadelphia Regional Medical Center. Paige was a little early, so she pulled her phone out, intending to play Tetris for a few minutes, but she saw that Emily had already replied. Paige wasn't expecting her to be awake yet. She opened the message and quickly read the text.

"Eden, actually. Jo was in charge of lighting. Charlie was making drinks."

"Why were you drinking on a Tuesday night?" Paige typed out. Her attention was caught by this detail, because, while Emily and her friends definitely did their share of drinking, as far as Paige knew, they kept it relegated to the weekends. Despite her lingering anger at the girl, Paige couldn't help but feel worried about Emily.

"Why you do think?" Emily's response read.

Paige eyes narrowed at the messed up syntax. It wasn't like Emily. Paige didn't have time to do this over text, though. As much as she didn't want to, she pressed call next to Emily's name in her contact list and put the phone up to her ear.

"Paigey," Emily said, slurring the girl's name slightly as she answered. "I knew that tit pic would get you."

"Are you still drunk?" Paige asked incredulously.

"Maybe just a little bit," Emily admitted. "Anyway, why do you care?"

"Emily, why did you start drinking in the first place? It's the middle of the week."

"Well, after you hung up on me, I was like yelling and crying, and so Charlie made like five gallons of sangria to cheer me up. She's like…Mary Poppins…with alcohol. I love Charlie," Emily explained all of this in a very dreamy voice.

"Okay," Paige was losing her patience quickly. She felt bad that she'd upset Emily so much, but Emily had upset her, too. "You're not allowed to drink anymore. For at least 24 hours. Are the other girls still with you?"

"No. They went to bed."

"What have you been doing drinking by yourself?" Paige asked.

"I've been drawing you a map to my vagina in case you ever want to see me again. And for your information," Emily added angrily, as if only just realizing what Paige had said a minute ago, "you don't get to tell me what to do. I'll drink all day if I want to. You can't just tell me to leave you alone and break things off between us and then tell me what to do like 4 hours later."

While Emily's internal clock was a little off in this estimation, her sentiment held true. Paige was sending mixed messages. She swallowed down her pride, her mouth pressed into a thin line and said, "Em, I have a lot to worry about right now. I can't be worrying about you, too. Just…please stop drinking."

"Whatever, Paige. I gotta get back to my map."

"Don't you have class, Em?"

"You know, for someone who wants nothing to do with me, you sure do know my schedule," Emily scoffed.

Paige glanced at the time. It was now 8:50. She needed to go into the enormous hospital so she could have enough time to find the wing Grandma Hazel was staying in.

"I gotta go," she muttered, sure that this conversation with Emily wasn't going to become productive any time soon.

"Of course you do," Emily replied. "And I gotta get back to this sangria. Bye."

Paige climbed out of the car, locked it, and then pressed call on another one of the contacts on her phone and put it back to her ear as she walked through the parking lot. It rang three times before a sleepy voice answered.

"Hello?"

"Jo, hey, it's Paige," she said. "I'm so sorry to wake you up, but I just talked to Emily. She's still drunk. And still drinking. She said she was drawing some kind of map to her vagina. I don't know. She sounded pretty far gone."

"Oh god," Jo sighed deeply, knowing immediately what Emily had been talking about, "Okay, I'll go take care of her. Thanks for calling, Paige…hey, are you all right? I'm so sorry about your grandma."

"Oh," Paige was caught off guard by Jo's concern for her. "Um…no, not really."

"Well, I was serious in that text. I'm always available if you ever want to talk," Jo told her.

"I…thanks," Paige stuttered out. "I'll keep that in mind. I'm at the hospital right now, though, so I gotta go."

"Alright, bye Paige."

* * *

Jo rubbed her eyes for a moment before pulling herself out of bed and heading down to the basement where she was sure she would find Emily working on her Map of Myself. Though, from what Paige had just told her, it sounded like it had taken an interesting turn.

Jo knocked on the basement door and heard an indistinct "YO" from Emily somewhere within before she opened the door and went down. It was an interesting scene that Jo was met with. Emily, indeed, had her Map rolled out in front of her on the floor and she was wearing Paige's purple Vallance sweatshirt with just a pair of bright pink boy shorts on her bottom half. She had the large pot of sangria sitting next to her on the floor and she was drinking some of it out of a ladle, slurping loudly. As Jo approached her, she looked more closely at the body map Emily had apparently been working on for the past few hours.

"Emily…" Jo couldn't help but laugh. "What are you even doing?"

Emily had covered nearly the entire outline of her body with different patterned and colored arrows, all pointed, very tactfully, at the crotch on the outline of herself. And right there, on the vagina itself, she had written in large, block letters,

"WELCOME TO TRIBBERVILLE"

"Oh my god," Jo said through her laughter. "We have to put that on your door."

"Josephine!" Emily exclaimed, looking up at Jo for the first time since she'd come down the stairs. "How very nice of you to rejoin me. Grab a ladle! Help yourself!"

"You are such an entertaining drunk, but I think it's time for you to sober up now, Em," Jo told her gently.

"Ugh," Emily grumbled. "That gorgeous bitch called you, didn't she?"

"Yeah, she did," Jo admitted, grabbing the pot off the floor and heading upstairs with it. "Like I told you last night, I really don't think she meant what she said. She obviously cares about you if she called me to make sure you stopped drinking."

"God," Emily said, drawing out the vowel of the word and falling backwards onto the floor. "I'm so horny!"

"You're on your own there, champ," Jo said from the top of the stairs as she closed the door behind her.

"Well," Emily reasoned out loud, "it's not like I can go to class like this."

Emily grabbed her phone and crawled over to her bed, chuckling at the brazen idea that had just formed in her mind. She situated her back and shoulders on her pillows and let her legs fall open. Then she opened the camera on her phone and switched it to video and started recording as she slipped her hand into her underwear and started playing with her clit. She moaned loudly, playing it up more than she normally would when she was by herself.

"Oh fuck," she moaned. "Paige… just thinking about you gets me wet."

* * *

Paige spent most of the morning just sitting and talking with her parents and Grandma Hazel. When Paige had first entered the room, her grandmother had given her an enormous smile, though there were tears in her eyes, and opened her arms for Paige. The two had sat together for a long few minutes just holding each other and crying quietly.

"There, now," Hazel had said finally, holding Paige's face in her hands and wiping the tears off. "That's enough of that. We'll take care of each other now, dearheart."

Paige had been so relieved to see that Hazel was still her lively, feisty self, even laid up in the hospital with a broken leg. She had spoken with one of the nurses for a long time about the rehabilitation time frame they were looking at and exactly how often Paige would need to bring Hazel in for check-ups. The nurse had given Paige the names and numbers of several cab companies and car services from which she could request vans with wheelchair ramps. Then she showed Paige how she would need to wrap Hazel's cast for her shower and how to properly and safely help Hazel support her weight on her one good leg to transfer from bed to wheelchair, wheelchair to the bathroom. By the time she and her parents left, just after lunch, Paige's head was spinning with all the new information, with things she hadn't even considered when she volunteered to be her grandmother's caregiver.

"So how was the first night in the upstairs bedroom?" Paige's mom asked her as they left the hospital.

"I couldn't do it," Paige said shrugging. "I slept downstairs. I think I just need to buy my own bedding and maybe a table or chair or something. Just so it doesn't feel like I'm stealing Grandma's room  _quite_ as much."

Anne glanced at Nick and he nodded at her, seeming to know what she was thinking. She was smiling when she turned back to Paige.

"You're absolutely right," she said to her daughter. "Let's go shopping."

Nick opted out of the shopping trip, telling them he had some work to do at the church and that he needed to work on his sermon. So Paige and Anne took the Buick and spent the afternoon at Target picking out a few things to make the room feel more like Paige's own. With her mother helping her redecorate the bedroom, it felt less like she was vandalizing a memorial and more like a fun project. Her mother's approval always had that effect on Paige.

When they were back at the house, putting the new sheets and blanket on the bed, Anne, with her eyes still trained on the task at hand, said, "So. Tell me about Emily."

Paige lost her grip on the fitted sheet corner she was holding and it sprang back to the center of the mattress as she laughed nervously.

"Sometimes I forget how much you and Dad talk," Paige said sheepishly.

"We have been known to," Anne said, looking at her daughter, with an expression of interest.

"Emily…she's like the prettiest girl in the world," Paige began, blushing. "She goes to Vallance, but Dad probably already told you that. Um…she's a poet. Her Dad's in the Army. She's an only child. I don't know. She has this way of making things beautiful with the way she talks about them. She builds these family units around her wherever she goes. "

Anne was smiling widely when Paige chanced a look at her mother's face.

"She sounds wonderful," Anne said genuinely.

"Yeah, she is," Paige said sadly. "But we got into this fight last night. I totally fuc—" Paige caught herself mid-word and looked up at her mom, who now had a stern, reproachful look on her face.

"You watch your language, young lady," Anne said.

"Yes ma'am. Sorry," Paige said quickly, her shoulders slumping. "Uh, I totally  _messed_ things up."

"Go on," her mother said.

"Well, I told her I left Stanford. And she, well, she has the same opinion about it that Tuck does. But she didn't present it in such a mean way. She said she was worried I was going to regret coming home to take care of Grandma."

"And how did that make you feel?" her mother asked patiently.

"Scared…attacked," Paige admitted. "Everybody thinks I've ruined my life—Tuck, Em, Coach Yarbrough. Mom, do you think this was a mistake?"

"I think it was a choice that not many people would have made. Especially someone your age. But no, I don't think it was a mistake, sweetheart. I know you pretty well. Less so since you left for college, but well enough to know that you would have regretted it if you had stayed at Stanford. I think you would've wished every day you had come home to help your grandma. It would've been an unlivable situation for you.

"Your brother…well, you are not Theodore. You may be twins, but you're such different people. He's angry with you because you made the wrong decision for  _him._ He's just trying to protect you, in his way. Once he realizes, or remembers, rather, that you don't have the same needs and wants, he'll come around. It's been hard on both of you adjusting to living your lives separately. I'm sure he'll apologize soon.

"As for Emily, I don't have quite the same insight on her, of course, but it sounds like she was just trying to look out for you. You two are still getting to know each other. She probably just doesn't understand why you made this decision. But I can tell you that the more confident  _you_ are in your decision, the more confident she'll be that you made the  _right_ decision. When  _you're_  at peace, everyone else will come around."

"Yeah," Paige said, flopping down on her new plum-colored bedspread. "You're right."

"I'm going to head home for the night," Anne said kissing her daughter. At the doorway, she turned around, though. "Paige, apologizing fixes most things."

* * *

"Em, are you alive?"

A gentle hand was rubbing circles on Emily's back, but it didn't distract her from the fact that her head felt like it was about to split open and let her miserable brain spill out everywhere. This was going to be one hell of a hangover. She groaned pathetically.

"Eden, what time is it?" Emily croaked.

"It's almost 3. I heard you made some poor choices after the rest of us went to bed last night," Eden's voice sounded scolding, but like she was holding off on really letting Emily have it until she saw just how hung over she was. Eden was stern, but not cruel.

Emily opened her eyes a millimeter and saw that her phone was clutched in her left hand. She stared at it curiously for moment and then—

"Oh no," she muttered, her eyes growing wider and wider as the memory of what she had done that morning slowly came back to her. "No no no no." Emily sat up as quickly as she dared with her spinning head and opened her phone. It was on her email already, which wasn't a good sign at all. She nervously tapped her sent messages. It showed she had sent Paige an email at 8:27 that morning. And the email had a video attachment.

"Oh my god, I actually sent it," she whispered, horrified. She dropped her phone onto the bed and covered her face with both of her hands. "Noooooooo."

Footsteps were coming down the stairs.

"How's the founder of Tribberville doing?" Charlie's voice came from nearby. "Other than hung over?"

"I think Emily made some more poor choices after Jo confiscated the sangria this morning." Eden had been watching Emily closely.

"Oooh. Whadja do Emilio?" Charlie chuckled.

Emily pulled her hands down just enough so that she could glance up at her friends who were perched on the edge of her bed.

"I may…"Emily began, "or may not…have taken a video. Of me. Masturbating. And emailed it to Paige."

"Emily Fields, you made a sex tape! Who are you, Kim Kardashian?!" Eden shouted, actually smacking Emily on the forehead.

"Ouch!" Emily said, falling back onto her pillow despondently.

"Are you serious?" Charlie asked, sounding like a kid on Christmas morning, and collapsing soon after in a fit of laughter.

"I didn't know we needed to get you a fucking babysitter!" Eden continued berating her friend. "First, you stay up all night drinking and then you made this video! You were on a roll this morning, Fields. What were you thinking?!"

"It seemed like a good idea at the time!" Emily shouted back, finding a little fight in her after all.

"It was a GREAT IDEA!" Charlie yelled wrapping her arms around Eden and yanking her back onto the bed with the other two.

"I swear to God, Charlotte…" Eden began, struggling to unpin her arms from her sides, but she didn't finish because at that moment they all heard the front door open and close above them.

Charlie let go immediately and took off up the stairs yelling, "JO! Jo! Emily made a sex tape and leaked it herself! WE'RE GONNA BE FAMOUS!"

A few minutes later, Charlie and Jo came down to the basement again.

"You didn't," was all Jo said, an exasperated look on her face.

"I did," Emily sighed.

"Well," Charlie said loudly from the foot of the bed, "no use crying over spilled jizz."

"Charlie!" Jo exclaimed.

Eden, however, picked up one of Emily's pillows off the bed and decked Charlie so hard in the head that she fell out of sight and onto the floor. Then Eden leaned over the end of the bed to glare at her.

"Why did I ever agree to go out with you?" Eden said, shaking her head.

"You're lucky I'm fond of your violent outbursts," Emily heard Charlie respond from the floor.


	35. What Goes Around Cums Around

After her mother left, Paige changed into her pajamas and grabbed her laptop out of her suitcase. She hadn't even opened it in two days and figured she should at least check her email to see if she had any loose ends to tie up with Stanford, or if she' d heard back from the Office of the Registrar about getting her transcripts sent to CCP.

Paige opened her gmail and scrolled through a few things—the Redbox newsletter about new releases, something from Target, a coupon for Barnes and Noble. Then there was an email from Emily. Paige clicked on it. It was a video, but Emily hadn't provided any explanation of what it was. The only thing she'd written in the body of the email was, "A Very Happy Unbirthday to you."

"What the hell?" Paige muttered quietly as she clicked on the video and opened it, wondering if Emily had still been drunk when she sent this.

The video started playing and Paige watched as Emily's familiar brown-skinned body came up on the screen. She watched as Emily slipped a hand into her hot pink boy shorts and started touching herself.

"Oh my god," Paige muttered, smiling slightly and leaning closer to her screen, breathing heavily.

It was the sexiest thing Paige had ever seen. It was better than porn or any movie sex scene. Nothing could compare to this because Emily had made this  _for_ Paige and the entire time she was moaning Paige's name and saying the filthiest, dirtiest things Paige had ever heard. And the fact that Paige couldn't actually see Emily's hand or what she was doing made it, somehow, even sexier.

She was soaked within the first two minutes, but she didn't want to touch herself. Not yet anyway. Not when she could have the real thing. It got harder and harder to hold back though, as Emily's hips started to rock up against her hand, as she continued to mutter what she wanted Paige to do to her between moans and gasps. And then about 5 minutes in, Emily had pushed up the sweatshirt she was wearing. ( _My sweatshirt,_ Paige thought with relish) and began grabbing and pinching her tits and nipples for a few moments before returning her hand to her underwear. Paige slid her own hand under her shirt and mirrored Emily's motions, paying special attention to the metal barbell pierced through her left nipple, the way she usually did, the occasional "fuck" escaping her lips. At the end of the video, Paige got to suffer through the very unique torture of being able to hear Emily gasping and groaning through her orgasm but not being able to see if happening, on her face or anywhere else, because Emily had dropped phone as the wave of pleasure hit her. She had been drunk, after all.

* * *

It was nearly 10 pm. The girls were all in the living room working on homework. Well, Eden was stretched out with her legs in Charlie's lap, snoring slightly, with a copy of  _A Streetcar Named Desire_ on top of her face. Charlie was pretending to read a section of her history book about Second Wave Feminism, but was actually reading the latest issue of Rolling Stone. Jo was on the other side of the sectional, memorizing terms for her anatomy class. Emily was stretched out on the floor, writing a paper comparing the poetry of Catallus and Louis MacNeice, trying to pretend like she wasn't waiting for the other shoe to drop in regards to her foray into adult filmmaking. It was hard to do, though, when Charlie wouldn't stop talking about it.

"Look," Charlie said, as if they were in the middle of a conversation instead of a 30 minute silence, "all I'm saying is it's either going to go REALLY WELL, or you'll never hear from her again."

"You're just so comforting, Charlie," Emily said, tapping her pen nervously against her poetry book. "Has anyone ever told her you that?"

"No," Charlie responded distractedly, ripping a corner off of the magazine. She had been throwing tiny balls of paper at Eden for the past 10 minutes, trying to get them down her shirt.

"You're also very good at picking up on sarcasm," Jo threw over casually at Charlie who rolled her eyes and hit Jo in the face with one of the paper balls.

"Everything is fine," Jo went on, scowling at Charlie. "I mean, it was stupid, but honestly, who gets offended when someone they're dating send them that kind of video? Paige is probably just busy and hasn't had a chance to call you yet."

"Yeah, I'll bet she's busy!" Charlie said, grinning widely.

"She might have found it insensitive," Emily reasoned, ignoring Charlie's last comment, "given what's going on in her life right now."

"Yeah, maybe," Jo told her truthfully. "But, I doubt it."

"Can we just talk about something else?" Emily pleaded.

"Sure…" Jo said, looking up from her flashcards. "I have two topics you can choose from: 1. It's you birthday in two weeks, so what do you want to do? Or 2. I think Liz has a crush on you, just FYI."

"What?" Emily said, sitting up quickly to look at Jo. "Liz who? There are a lot of people named Liz at this school."

"Theater Liz. Liz Donovan," Jo responded. "She stage managed  _Eurydice_."

"Okay, and why do you think she has a crush on me?" Emily questioned.

"Well, I started helping her do props for  _Cloud 9_  when I finished hanging all the lights last week. She just…asks about you a lot. Like, what your major is, and if you have a job on campus, and how long I've known you."

"If she's into girls, why isn't she hitting on you?" Emily asked. "You're available and cute. I'm a hot mess."

"Jo's a little too equestrian for her," Charlie chimed in. "If you know what I mean."

"Um, no…what the hell do you mean?" Emily deadpanned.

"Did you just call me a horse?" Jo asked, glaring at Charlie again.

"No!" Charlie said. "You're just…and I don't mean any offense here, Josephine…you're just kind of a down home gal," Charlie finished, spreading her hands in front of her, as if to say,  _here it is._

"I'm from Wisconsin," Jo said defensively. "What's wrong with that?"

"You just," Charlie said, only digging herself in deeper. "you wear a lot of plaid."

"So do you!" Jo said pointing at the teal and gold plaid shirt Charlie currently had on.

"Yeah, but it's a different kind of plaid," Charlie retorted. "Mine is like Seattle-grunge plaid. Yours is more…rural."

"Whatever, Charlie," Jo said, crossing her arms over her chest. "How would you even know what type of girls Liz is into?"

"She was in that painting class I took," Charlie said, picking up the book she was pretending to read, and tossing aside the magazine. "We, uh…hung out a few times…and from our…. _conversations_ …I was able to gather a few things."

"Okay," Jo said with one eyebrow cocked. "Vague much?"

"Wait a minute," Emily said, a grin forming on her face, "was she the girl that you hooked up with in that storage closet?!"

"No!" Charlie said, glancing over at Eden's still snoozing form, then dropping her voice to a whisper and continuing. "It only happened like 3 times. It was no big deal."

"Why didn't you tell us it was her?" Jo whispered back, remembering how oddly resistant Charlie had been at the time to tell them who the girl had been even though she was more than generous with the rest of the details.

"She had a boyfriend at the time," Charlie shrugged. "It was a sticky situation. Anyway…if Paige jumps ship, you should go for it, Em. Liz is a lovely girl. Very flexible."

"Oh god," Emily said, scrunching up her face. "I'm sorry I asked."

"The whole point of that," Jo announced, "was just to say, if you're not interested," Jo looked at Emily as she spoke, "you should probably avoid Liz, because she seems pretty hell bent."

"Thanks," Emily told her. "I'll watch my back."

"So let's talk about birthday plans, then," Charlie said smiling. "Please say we can throw you a rave!"

"Um…" Emily pretended to consider it. "No."

"We have to do something big," Jo said. "It's your 21st."

Emily's phone chimed from the pocket of her sweatshirt, however, and brought the party planning to an abrupt halt. Frantically, she pulled it out and saw that it was a text from Paige. All it said, though, was "Are you busy?" Emily read it aloud to her friends.

"That's code for 'I'd like to have phone sex if you're available,'" Charlie told her point blank.

Emily looked over to Jo to see if she would confirm or deny this assessment.

"For once," Jo said, "I'm going to have to agree with Charlotte."

Emily typed a quick response, not wanting to get her hopes up, "No, I'm not," and headed down to the basement. It was only about 30 seconds later that Emily's phone started ringing. She was so nervous that her hands were shaking as she answered.

"Paige, I'm so sorry," Emily said in lieu of a greeting. "I don't know what I was thinking when I made that video this morning. I mean, I was drunk, not that it's an excuse—"

"Emily," Paige cut her off mid apology and Emily was caught off guard by the sheer need that was apparent in Paige's voice. Her name was followed by a deep sigh from Paige that was practically dripping with sex. "Talk to me..." Paige said breathily, "like you did in that video."

The request sent a jolt straight to Emily's center. Emily was almost sure, from the way her voice sounded, that Paige was touching herself already.

"Fuck, babe," Emily purred apologetically. "I don't remember what I said. Remind me?"

Paige laughed lightly. "You were more drunk than I thought this morning," she began. It didn't even occur to her to be embarrassed by this situation or to feel awkward about what she wanted. She was too turned on to think of anything else. "You said you wanted me to take you from behind with a strap-on. You told me you wanted to be spanked while I pounded your tight cunt."

This was all very, very true. Emily had fantasized about Paige fucking her senseless on her hands and knees many times before. But to hear it told to her in Paige's voice was more than enough to have Emily drenched in moments. But this was about Paige, what she needed right now, and Emily was happy to give it to her. Now that she had a direction, Emily needed no more prompting or help from Paige. Words were  _her_  specialty, after all.

"Oh fuck, yes. I do. I want that so bad, for you to push me onto my hands and knees in front of you, or lean me over the arm of the couch, press my back down with one hand and pull my hair back with the other while you slide your cock into me. Slow at first. Excruciatingly slow, until you're flush against my ass, deep inside my wet pussy. Then I want you to spank me and make me beg for it. Play with my nipples, rough. I want you to pinch them and bite my shoulders. God. I want you to grope me and then grab me by the hips and just pound me, fuck me so hard I can't hold myself up anymore, until I'm screaming your name."

To say that Emily had a talent for dirty talk would be the understatement of the century. She was like Van Gogh and this conversation was her masterpiece. Paige was quickly coming undone from the scene Emily was paining on the inside of her closed eyes, the fingers of her left hand buried deep inside of her and the fingers of her right hand rubbing tight circles over her clit. She'd had enough foresight to put the phone on speaker. Paige was close, but she didn't want it to stop just yet.

"Keep going," Paige urged. "Tell me more. I…I'm getting close."

"If I were with you, Paige, I'd have my face buried between your thighs, licking slowly all over your pussy, running my tongue through your folds, sucking your clit, slipping inside you to fuck you with my tongue. God, when I tasted you, licked your cum off your fingers that day, it was the biggest tease of my life. I want to taste you straight from the source. I want to hold your hips down as you cum into my mouth, feel your walls clench around my tongue. I want to be your undoing, Paige McCullers."

Emily could hear how close Paige was, her breathing was labored and she was letting out delicious little grunts more and more frequently.

"Cum for me baby," Emily commanded. "Let me hear you."

And Paige did as she was told.

"Oh fuck!" Paige yelled, throwing her head back as every muscle in her body began to thrum before she let out a long moan as her orgasm crashed over her.


	36. Reaching An Impasse

"Paige?"

Emily's voice seemed to be coming from some other planet. Paige was floating away up in space, riding the fumes of the orgasm rocket in the quiet serenity of the sky, and Emily's distant voice was the only thing still tying her to the earth.

"Just…wait," she mumbled.

"It's been like, 3 minutes already," Emily laughed. "That good, huh?"

"Mmmhmm," Paige breathed out, finally opening her eyes again. "I think I just really needed that."

"You do sound more relaxed than you have in weeks," Emily commented. "When was the last time you had an orgasm?"

"Um, let's see…." Paige was having a hard time remembering anything at this point. "A few days before Halloween, I think."

"Jeez. No wonder you were so on edge."

"Why? How often do you get yourself off?" Paige asked.

"Once a day, usually," Emily answered.

"Is that normal?" Paige suddenly felt like some kind of celibate nun next to Emily.

"Well, it is for me," Emily replied. "But it's not like there's some frequency or range you have to be in to be normal. I do think you might be a little less on edge if you rubbed one out a few times a week, though."

"I'll take that into consideration now that I have my own room," Paige told her.

"I'd be happy to help anytime you need some inspiration," Emily said seductively.

"Well now that I have this video, I don't really need you anymore, do I?"

"Very funny, McCullers."

"I'll delete it. If you want me to," Paige told Emily honestly.

"No. Keep it," Emily said. "I might be in class sometimes when you're in the mood. Wouldn't want to deprive you."

Paige laughed a little and a comfortable silence spread around both girls on either end of the phone for another couple of minutes.

"Hey," Paige finally said gently, easing them both back into something she'd been worried she might have lost.

"Hi," Emily said back. "I missed you."

"How's everything at Vallance?"

Emily spent a few minutes filling Paige in on all the going-ons in Solomon, Illinois. She told her about her classes, her fast-approaching birthday, how Charlie and Eden were now dating but how it didn't seem to have changed anything about their dynamic, the Maps she and Jo were working on and why Emily would have to start her's over again. Paige listened, grateful to have someone she could share such easy conversation with.

"So what's going on with you and your Grandma?" Emily asked after she was finished recapping her life.

"Oh, not too much yet, but things are going to start picking up soon, I think," Paige told her. "Tomorrow is my first real day on duty. I'm going to be at the hospital pretty much every day until she's released. Just to keep her company and yell at the doctors and stuff for her."

"Paige?"

"Yeah?"

"I am sorry. About…the things I said. I should have just listened to you before I made any judgements. And, uh, the video, too. Sorry about that." Emily said all of this very carefully. She wasn't sure if she really needed to be sorry for the video, but as long as she was apologizing, she figured she might as well cover all her bases.

"You are quite the handful when you're drunk," Paige laughed. "But it did get us talking again, so I'm glad you did it. It is was fucking hot. So I'm really glad you did it. As for the other stuff…it's okay. I was just feeling kind of attacked on all sides."

"I'm on your side, though," Emily said quietly. "Are we…okay?"

"I'm okay if you are," Paige replied honestly. "But I'm not really sure how this is going to go. I've never taken care of someone like this. I mean, I'm going to have to cook dinner every night and clean the house and take her to all her appointments. I just don't know what my schedule is going to be like…"

Paige by no means wanted to end things with Emily, but she also wasn't sure how they were supposed to continue given her new situation. Paige suddenly had more responsibility on her shoulders than ever before. Stanford had been stressful and it was a big responsibility keeping her grades up and her swimming times down, but still, she had only been responsible for herself. Now one of the most important people in her life was going to be relying on her, too. That was a first for Paige. She hoped Emily would understand all the unspoken things behind the words she was able to get out.

"We'll just take it one day at a time," Emily assured her. "We'll figure it out. I mean, this was never going to be simple, this thing between us, when we live so far apart. But I really like you, Paige. I want…you."

"I really like you, too," Paige said, smiling. "I'm sorry I blew up on you."

Another silence followed this statement, and Paige let her eyes close again. She could hear the deep ticking of the grandfather clock down in the living room; the house itself groaning as it settled around her for the night. Even the weight of the air in the room was familiar to her, smelling like a mixture of lemon drops, moth balls, and laundry detergent. All this combined with Emily's presence was lulling Paige to sleep.

"I should probably go to sleep, Em," Paige finally said. "We'll talk again, soon, yeah?"

"Sounds good," Emily said, working hard to keep the sadness from her voice. She wanted to stay on the line with Paige for the rest of the night, even if neither of them were saying anything. "Sweet dreams, Paige."

"Bye, Em."

* * *

The next few days seemed to crawl by. Emily felt like she was engaged in some cruel game of tug-of-war and the only way to make the time pass at all was to grab it and pull until another hour had passed. It was taking all her strength. It seemed like every time she called Paige, the girl was busy. She was at the hospital or at the grocery store or raking leaves or going to the bank. The two had enjoyed a fun couple hours over text 2 days after they'd had phone sex, though. Paige had been cleaning out the fridge and cupboards and sent Emily pictures of the weird leftovers and canned goods she found and Emily tried to guess what they were (or had once been). But other than that, the contact between them hadn't been very substantial; just a few texts here and there and a short conversation one night.

Tuck had been avoiding The Log since everything had happened with Paige and the twins had shouted homophobic slurs at one another. Or rather, he'd been avoiding Emily. He'd been coming over, but spending all of his time upstairs with one of the other girls. Emily only knew he'd been there if she saw him leave or one of the girls mentioned something he'd said to them. Although Paige hadn't told her as much, Emily knew that things being off between the she and Tuck must be bothering her. Though, Emily suspected both Paige and Tuck were too stubborn about this particular situation to make the first step towards making amends with each other. Emily was fed up with the pair of them, to be honest, so she decided to take matters into her own hands.

When she got up on Friday morning, Emily found Eden in the kitchen pouring herself a bowl of cereal.

"Hey, Edie," Emily said slyly. "Things with Tuck have been kind of horrible lately. I really miss him…"

"God, tell me about it," Eden said, heading into the dining room with her cereal and sitting down. "Whenever we bring you up he just says that you're 'sleeping with the enemy.'"

"I told him phone sex doesn't count, but he said it's the principle of the matter, not the act itself," Charlie said from where she was already seated at the dining room table. She was digging in her back pack as she spoke and finally emerged from her search with a king-size pack of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups clutched in her hand and a victorious look on her face.

Eden stared at Charlie for a moment, then rolled her eyes and snatched the candy from her. "Are you kidding me?" she said incredulously, holding up the orange package.

"What?" Charlie asked in a high pitched tone.

"You can't eat this for breakfast!" Eden spat at her.

"Why not? It has peanut butter in it! Peanut butter is a breakfast food. You can put it on toast and stuff."

"No," Eden replied simply and pushed her own bowl of Rice Krispies in front of Charlie and went back into the kitchen to get another bowl for herself.

Charlie scowled at her retreating form but took a bite of the cereal nonetheless, at which point Emily let out a loud cough that sounded a lot like "whipped," and Charlie flipped her off. When Eden had returned to the table, Emily sat down, too.

"So I have this plan, to make Tuck talk to Paige so we can get everything back to normal again," Emily explained. "It involves some lying and deception and trapping him in the upstairs portion of the house. Will you guys help me?"

Charlie said, "Sure," at the same that Eden said, "What do you mean trapping him?"

"I'll explain that part later," Emily said, brushing Eden's comment aside. "Charlie, will you just ask him to come over and drink with you tonight? We've still got a bottle of that peppermint schnapps he likes. Tell him you wanna play strip poker or something."

Charlie's face perked up at this idea. "Can we actually play strip poker?"

"I don't care," Emily answered. "You just have to keep him busy for an hour or two and get him drunk enough that…well… just get him a little drunk, okay?"

Charlie said, "OKAY!" at the same time that Eden said, "This is starting to sound a little illegal!"

"It's not illegal, Eden, don't be ridiculous," Emily huffed. "Just make sure you're here tonight when Tuck comes over. Where's Jo? I need her help, too."

"She already left," Charlie mumbled through a spoonful of Rice Krispies. "I think she was meeting someone for breakfast."

"Damn," Emily said getting up. "I'll just hunt her down at the theater later, I guess. I'll see you guys tonight. Have Tuck come over at like, 7, okay?"

Charlie nodded as Emily grabbed her jacket and bag and headed out for the day.

* * *

After classes that afternoon, Emily walked over to the theater building and headed backstage. A couple of guys running lines with each other pointed her in the direction of green room where they'd last seen Jo. A group of students in the green room pointed Emily to the props closet, which was not so much a closet as an enormous room piled high with every piece of furniture, object, and knick-knack a person could imagine. Emily went in, edging past a teetering stack of rolled up area rugs, and slowly began to wind her way through the various sections of props. There were 6 shelves of table lamps, followed by standing lamps, then old, empty bottles of every type of alcohol known to man, then dishes and cutlery, candlesticks, and an old beanbag chair was sitting beside a pool table that was leaned on its side. Eventually, following the sound of voices, Emily found Jo standing in front of a strange assortment of broken instruments with another girl. They looked like they were trying to restring a guitar.

"Hey, Josephine," Emily said and laughed when Jo cringed at the sound of her full name.

"Emily," she said without turning around, though she did let out an exasperated sigh. "What are doing in here?"

"Oooh, Clue!" Emily said, getting distracted by the stack of board games on the wall opposite of the instruments. She grabbed the box from the shelf. "I haven't played this in years!"

"Unfortunately, most of those are just the boxes," the other girl said to her as Emily opened the box and her shoulders slumped disappointedly at its lack of contents. "But I have it, at my apartment. If you want to play sometime."

Emily looked up at the girl as she said this and quickly realized the trap she had just inadvertently walked into. The girl was very pretty and slightly shorter than Emily. She had shoulder length tightly curled, brown hair and bright green eyes that were staring at her very intently. She looked very pleased indeed that Emily Fields had just stumbled into her midst.

"Em, you remember Liz, right?" Jo said from behind Liz's back, giving Emily a raised eyebrow, and slightly shake of the head. Jo's expression very clearly said to Emily, "You never listen to me, do you?"

"Oh," Emily said with a forced sort of smile stuttering to life on her face. "Liz! Don…Donovan right? Yeah, of course I remember you." Emily quickly stuffed the empty Clue box back onto the shelf.

"I just needed a quick word with Jo," she said apologetically to Liz, who seemed overjoyed that Emily even knew her last name. "'Scuse me," Emily muttered as she turned her back to the girl.

"What?" Jo asked tersely, while her eyes told Emily, "You're on your own, genius."

"I need your help with something tonight, around 7," Emily said, lowering her voice a little in the hopes that Liz would busy herself with the guitar again and give she and Jo some privacy. Out of the corner of her eye, Emily saw her crouch down by the instrument again and was glad that Liz was, at least, polite even if she did seem overly keen.

"Yeah, I'll probably be home before then. I mean, it's Friday night," Jo told her. "What do you need help with?"

In spite of herself, Jo's curiosity had been piqued by Emily coming to find her like this. Whatever Emily wanted to do must be important if she was going out of her way to make sure Jo would be home to help her.

"I'm going to…well, I'm going to try to fix the Tuck situation," Emily revealed, then scanned the room quickly after an idea popped into her head. "Actually, is there any rope in here that we could borrow? We might need it…"

Liz eagerly jumped up from where she was fiddling with the guitar, and said, "Yeah, we have rope! It's right over here." Then she put her hand on Emily's elbow and steered her down the aisle toward a corner where Emily could now see piles of rope coiled on the ground.

Emily glanced over her shoulder as she was whisked away by Liz and was happy to see that Jo was following close behind them.

"Use as much as you want," Liz told her, smiling widely, and gesturing at the vast amount of rope in front of them. "And then just, let me know when you want to return it. I can let you in. I have the keys."

"Thanks," Emily said, slightly disarmed by the girl's helpfulness.

"Emily,  _dear_ ," Jo said from behind her, her voice sounding like she was on the brink of laughter. "Why would we need rope to get Tuck to talk to his sister?"

"It's more of a precaution than a necessity," Emily answered her friend, a guilty smile turning the corners of her mouth up as she turned back at Jo. "Do you think that you, me, and Eden could lift the couch together?"

"I could help you, if you're moving some furniture," Liz spoke up again with an eager look on her face.

"Oh, gosh, that is…so nice of you to offer," Emily said, running her hand through her hair nervously. "But this is kind of a…"

"Family thing," Jo finished for her, her arms crossed in front of her chest and a lopsided grin on her face. "You know how awkward hostage situations can get for outsiders."

Emily elbowed her in the stomach. She didn't do it too hard, but hard enough that Jo made a small "oof" noise as Emily bent down and grabbed a length of rope.

"Thanks for your help, Liz," Emily said politely, then turned to Jo and said, "See you at home,  _honey_."

* * *

At 7 pm, Tuck showed up and headed upstairs to drink with Charlie, just like they had planned. Emily had the others wait 15 minutes, until they heard Charlie turn on Florence + The Machine very loudly before they sprang into action, having explained to them what they were going to do before Tuck had arrived. While Charlie set to work, getting Theodore McCullers nice and inebriated (and slightly naked), Emily, Jo, and Eden, began, as silently as possible, to move every bit of furniture that they could onto the stairs.

They started with the sectional, pulling the two halves apart, and moved the couch very slowly and painstakingly up to the very top of the stair case. It was a fairly narrow staircase and the couch was almost the exact width of the stairs. Jo, as the strongest of the three, had been alone lifting the higher end of the couch while the other two lifted together from the bottom of the stairs. As the girls gently set the couch down at the top of the stairs, however, Jo realized she was now trapped upstairs on her own.

"Now what?!" Jo hissed at Emily in a low whisper.

"Just climb over to the bannister and come down carefully," Emily whispered back.

"What do mean, 'come down carefully?!'" Jo said angrily.

"You're telling me that super dyke never slid down a fucking staircase railing as a kid?" Emily shot back at her.

"Did you just call me 'super dyke?'" Jo snarled.

"What are you gonna do about it? Huh?" Emily goaded her friend, holding her arms out. "Come on!"

"Fine!" Jo spat down at Emily. The two had perfected the whisper-shout in the past few minutes.

With that, Jo climbed awkwardly onto the railing by throwing her right leg over and around the couch and then grabbing the railing and sort of rolling sideways on it for a moment so as not to leave her left leg behind. Then she slowly inched her way down to the bottom of the stairs again.

"I hate you," she told Emily as she climbed off the railing and picked out the wedgie that had formed on her way down.

"What's going to stop Tuck from doing the same thing, though?" Eden broke in before the two could start fighting again.

"Charlie is getting him drunk for a reason," Emily explained. "And if by some miracle he does make it down here, that's what the rope is for."

"This better be worth it," Eden told her as they moved into the living room to pick up the second half of the sectional. "He and Paige better make up."

"What else do you have to be doing right now, Eden, honestly?"

"Nothing since you have trapped my girlfriend upstairs and encouraged her to strip down with a drunk boy!"

"1, 2, 3!" Jo counted off as they hoisted the second half of the couch together and moved it slowly through the doorway.

"He's gay! And like negative 10 on the threat scale, and you know it. Now both of you stop complaining!" Emily said in a labored whisper as the began walking the couch up the stairs.

"I don't think so," Jo said stopping, looking pointedly at Emily, "you're on the top half this time."

"Fine," Emily huffed, as the set the couch down. "Switch me places."

Once the second half of the sectional was wedged in between the first and wall at the bottom of the stairs, Emily slid gracefully down its leather surface to rejoin her friends, both of them looking none to pleased with her.

"Paige has made you crazy," Jo told her. "I hope you know that."

"Believe me," Emily responded. "You're preaching to the choir."

An hour later, the three girls stood back and admired their work. They had piled nearly every piece of furniture they could get find on top of the couches - chairs, end tables, and lamps. Then they'd stuck spare pairs of shoes and some of the pots and pans from the kitchen into the odd spaces that were still left around the couches. They'd even employed some board games and DVDs in their cases until there was literally not an inch of space that a body could possibly find to make their way down the stairs.

"What am I doing with my life?" Eden whispered in an awed tone as they looked at the impasse they'd just built.

" _Killing it_ ," Emily said with relish.

"Now what?" Jo said, her eyes wide, staring at most of their house now crammed onto the stairs in front of her.

"You guys wanna make a Funfetti cake? I grabbed a box at the store last week," Emily suggested.

"Oooh, yeah!" Eden replied, grabbing the 9x12 baking pan from where it was wedged between a dining room chair and the lamp from the side table in the living room. "I'll preheat the oven!"

* * *

It was around 9 o'clock. The cake was cooling on the counter in the kitchen, waiting to be frosted. It was a lovely fall evening. Eden had lit some candles in the dining room and opened the window because she'd wanted to smell the crisp, autumn air, so they'd all put some cozy sweaters on to compensate. The three girls were sitting around the table, discussing Emily's birthday again and sipping on wine, when they heard the door open above them. For a moment Tuck was laughing loudly at something Charlie had said, but then the laughter stopped abruptly. There was a few moments of silence. And then,

"YOU'VE GOT TO BE FUCKING KIDDING ME, FIELDS!" Tuck's deep voice shouted from the top of the stairs in the next room.

"That's my cue," Emily said cheerfully as she stood up and walked into the entry. She looked up at Tuck, his eyes slightly unfocused as he stared back down at her furiously. He was clearly drunk, gripping the tiny bit of the bannister that wasn't blocked for some support.

"Oh hey, Tuck!" Emily called up to him brightly. "I didn't know you were here!"


	37. Spice Girls Shit

"Are you serious right now?" Tuck asked in fierce whisper.

"You're lucky I'm being this nice with how you've been acting lately," Emily tossed back at him, hands propped on her hips fiercely. "How dare you ignore me just because you're upset with Paige! We're  _friends_  Tuck."

"This is utter bullshit!" Tuck said, gesturing wildly at the pile of furniture covering the stairs.

"It's an art installation, actually. I've just decided. Yep," Emily told him, crossing her arms firmly over her chest, feeling incredibly sassy. "It's a representation of your behavior lately. And its official name is now Utter Bullshit."

"You don't have to be a snarky bitch about it," Tuck said more quietly, but obviously still fuming.

At that moment, Charlie wandered out onto the landing, stumbling slightly. "What in the world is all of _this_!" she shouted in mock surprise.

"Oh shut up!" Tuck yelled at her. "I know you were in on this. All of you planned all of this together!" Tuck pointed an accusing finger at each of the girls in turn as he said this.

"You're right," Charlie said and slumped onto the banister of the upstairs landing, her head and arms resting on the railing, and stared longingly down at her three friends below her. "I miss you guys!" she shouted down to them, very drunkenly and very loudly, reaching her hand down towards them. "I wanna be down there now! On the winning side." As she said this she looked over at Tuck and started laughing.

"As soon as Tuck agrees he was the one being the bitch and apologizes to me," Emily began, explaining the terms of Tuck's release, " _and_  he calls Paige to work things out with her, we'll remove everything and you can both come down."

"She put you up to this didn't she?" Tuck said, obviously referring to Paige. "I should have known you were doing this for her!"

"Nope," Emily replied honestly. "Paige doesn't know anything about this. I planned this just for you."

"Screw this!" Charlie shouted and disappeared back into her room.

"That's probably not good," Eden said to no one in particular about Charlie's disappearance. "Charlotte gets very impatient when she's drunk. You should probably hurry this along, Em."

"Right you are, Eden," Emily replied in a business-like tone. "Well?" Emily looked up at Tuck again, and raised her eyebrows expectantly at him.

Tuck heaved a deep sigh and drug his hands over his face and through his hair a few times. "All the seats in the auditorium," he said finally, staring directly at Emily, "and she had to sit next to _you_."

"Fate's a bitch and so am I," Emily smiled proudly at Tuck's reference to her and Paige's serendipitous first meeting. "Your move, Theodore."

"Alright!" Tuck said after the two stared each other down for a few silent moments. "I will admit that I didn't really have a good reason to be avoiding  _you_ , BUT, there is no way I'm going to call Paige."

"Tuck, come on!" Emily pleaded, her facade breaking finally. "Paige is—"

Emily was abruptly cut off though, because the front door had just burst open behind her. It was Charlie, limping slightly, but with the most triumphant look on her face that Emily had ever seen.

"Suck it, McCullers!" Charlie yelled, with a maniacal gleam in her eyes, as she crossed the threshold, slamming her hands into her pelvis in an obscene gesture.

"How the hell did you do that?!" Tuck yelled down at Charlie.

Jo ran outside, probably to see if there was a ladder or something propped against the house, but found nothing that would have aided in her descent.

"Seriously, Charlie, how did you get down here?" Jo asked from the front yard.

"I climbed off the roof," she said, looking smug as hell. "This is some Spice Girls shit right here!"

"What?" Tuck said, but Eden's shouting, "DON'T YOU EVER DO THAT AGAIN!" mostly drowned it out.

Charlie did a happy little jig and then grabbed Eden's face in both of her hands and planted a sloppy kiss on her lips. Then shouted "GIRL POWER!"

"Will you corral her, please?" Emily said to Eden.

"You are a special brand of idiot, you know that?" Eden muttered, shoving Charlie in towards the dining room.

"You love me," Charlie said happily as the two disappeared into the next room.

"I can't believe she jumped off the roof!" Tuck said, and stumbled off into Charlie's room.

"Goddamit!" Emily said, wrenching the front door open again. "Jo! Grab the rope!" she shouted as she ran out into the front yard.

Tuck's head was sticking out of the open window and he was looking around at the overhang of roof where he had once sat with Emily. He hoisted himself out of the window and climbed tentatively on his hands and knees a couple feet out onto the roof. Jo trotted out and stood beside Emily.

"I don't know  _how_  something so well thought out has ended up going so wrong," Jo said sarcastically glancing sideways at Emily with her lips pursed.

"Everything is fine," Emily spat back. "I just need to talk Tuck off the roof."

"Tuck," Emily said loudly, "do I really need to remind you how scared of heights you are?"

"I've been out here before," he threw back at her, but he looked increasingly terrified and like he might puke the closer he got to the edge of the roof.

"Yes," Emily told him, "but you didn't jump off! Just go back inside and we can talk."

Tuck rolled, looking like he'd given up, rolled onto his back and lay spread-eagle in the middle of the slanted roof. "Why was I cursed with a twin?!" he shouted into the sky in a forlorn, melodramatic tone. "Why did she have to be gay?!"

Tuck reached into his jacket pocket then and pulled out his phone. "Fuck you, Paige!" he shouted as he pressed call.

* * *

Paige had just finished putting the clean dishes away from the dishwasher. She was exhausted. No one had told her that being a grown up was this much work. Most people, though, Paige reminded herself, went from college to a small apartment, not a fully functioning house they had to take care of while also spending most of their time in the geriatric ward of the hospital.

Paige's days had consisted of her waking up around 8 am, showering, eating breakfast and then going to the hospital to be with Grandma Hazel. The two had no trouble keeping each other company. They played cards and talked about the state of the world. Other times they read the paper or books together in silence, or Paige attempted to help her grandma do the crossword. She rarely knew any of the answers, but she was pretty good at the sudoku. At 11 am, Paige would help her grandma into her wheelchair and they would go on a walk around the hospital together. Hazel had asked Paige after the first day they did this if she would bake some cookies to hand out the doctors and nurses that worked in her wing. Paige couldn't say no, so she'd been baking a batch of cookies almost every night since.

After lunch, Paige would usually go home for a while to run errands and then eventually, make herself dinner and eat before she went back to the hospital around 6 pm. She and Hazel watched Jeopardy together at 6:30 and then went on another walk, wandering around the giant building for an hour or so. Paige didn't like the idea of her grandma being cooped up in the little hospital room, so she insisted that they get out and about at least twice a day.

Tonight, Paige had gotten home around 8:30 and then baked some snicker doodles and peanut butter cookies. Her clothes had some smudges of flour on them here and there and her hair was falling out of its messy bun. She couldn't wait to put her pajamas on and climb into bed. She thought fleetingly of calling Emily, but then she remembered it was Friday night and Emily was probably out at a party or drinking with her friends at the house. As Paige started to climb the stairs, however, her phone rang. She pulled it out of her pocket and was genuinely surprised to see that Tuck was calling her.

"Are you done being angry at me, then?" she said as a greeting.

"I have a riddle for you," Tuck said, nearly shouting, which caused Paige to pause on the stairs and pull the phone away from her ear. "What's mean…stupid…and trying to make me jump off the roof?!"

"Um…I don't get it," Paige replied, genuinely confused.

"Your mean stupid Emily is the answer!" Tuck said angrily.

"Are you drunk?" Paige asked. It was a rare occasion when Paige actually had the higher moral ground between the two of them and she was going to use Tuck's debauched state against him if she got the chance.

"I was set up is what I am!" Tuck yelled again. Paige could also hear someone's voice in the background saying something like " _go back"_ but it was hard to tell. They sounded sort of far away.

"Okay…where are you, Tuck?" Paige decided she needed to get a better handle on what was actually happening before she started in on guilt tripping her brother.

"If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times," Tuck sighed. "I am reclining on the roof of The Monologue Cabin."

" _Why_  are you on the roof?"

"I was so happy it was Friday. I was singing in the shower. And then Charlie says, 'Come over! We'll drink the peppermint schnapps!' and that seemed really nice, so I did that. And we played strip poker and I actually got her socks off! But little did I know, what was happening outside. In the downstairs! Betrayal! And when I went to leave, they were being the Spice Girls and the stairs were full of shit!"

"Well, that sounds….horrible…." Paige replied, stifling her laugh. Obviously, Tuck was very drunk and very upset. And on the roof for some reason. It didn't sound like a good combination. She decided to tread carefully so as not to make the situation any worse in case Tuck decided to do something stupid.

* * *

Meanwhile, Emily had gone back inside the house, leaving Jo in the yard to keep an eye on Tuck while she started clearing things off the stairs again.

As Emily skidded into the dining room returning a chair and lamp to their rightful place, she saw that Charlie had Eden pressed up against the fridge in the kitchen, oblivious to everything that was going on outside.

"Will you two stop making out and help me clear the stairs!?" she yelled at them as she headed back into the entry and grabbed more objects at random from the staircase.

"You're such a vag block, Fields," Charlie said as she and Eden appeared at Emily's side and began picking things up as well.

* * *

Paige was listening to Tuck go on and on about which of them was which Spice Girl when her phone buzzed with an incoming text message from Jo. All it said was, "Please encourage Tuck to go back inside the house."

"No, that doesn't make sense, though," Tuck was saying when Paige turned her attention back to him. "You're Ginger, duh. But I think Eden would have to be Scary Spice. Let's face it, that girl can be pretty frightening. And Emily is Posh. And Charlie is Sporty Spice, I guess. But that just leaves Jo for Baby Spice and that just doesn't work. Even if she is blonde."

"You are right about that," Paige said, placating her brother rather obviously, but he didn't seem to notice in his drunken haze. "Can I ask you something?"

"Of course you can! We shared a womb, didn't we?" Tuck answered.

"I really want to keep talking to you," Paige began, "but I'd feel a lot better about it if you got off the roof and went back inside. I'm worried you'll fall off."

"Okay…." Tuck said, in a exasperated tone. "But I am a dancer, you know."

"I know. A damn good one," Paige replied, unsure what that had to do with Tuck being on the roof, but deciding to just humor him.

"Hold on, I'm going to climb in the window now," Tuck said. For a couple minutes, all Paige heard was the odd shuffle or bump, and then there was a loud crash.

"Tuck?!" Paige called. "Are you okay?"

"Ouch," he replied groaning. "Ooh. A bed. That looks comfy."

"Yeah, why don't lay down and we can talk, okay?" Paige said, relieved he had fallen  _in_ the window and not  _out._ "So are you still mad at me about leaving Stanford?"

"Well, yes," Tuck said collapsing onto Charlie's wrinkled comforter. "But just because I don't want you to hate your life."

Paige was actually thankful that she got to have this conversation with a drunk Tuck. He was much more dramatic, but also more honest and he didn't call her as many names, which was big plus.

"I wasn't happy at Stanford, Tuck," she said gently, stretching her legs out onto the stair below her, where she'd sat down nearly 15 minutes ago. "I know that's hard for you to get, because I hid the truth from you for so long. But Stanford was the wrong choice for me. Coming home is the right choice. It's not like my life is ending. I'm just going to finish college here instead of in California."

"I just know how miserable I'd be if I had to move home," Tuck said. "God, it would suck so hard."

"But I'm not you, and I didn't  _have to,_ " Paige said. "You've gotta start trusting me. We have to let each other do our own things now, you know?"

"It's hard when I love you so much, Paigey, and you're so stupid sometimes," Tuck mumbled. "But I'll try."

"Thanks, Theodore," Paige said laughing lightly.

"Don't call me that," Tuck told her. "It sounds gross when you call me that."

Soon the only thing Paige could hear was the soft snores of her brother, and it was like a salve on her aching limbs, soothing the deepest parts of her. It was a different kind of peacefulness— older and surer— than the one she felt when she talked to Emily. She sat there happily and listened to him sleep, glad that things were back to normal; sure that one of the girls would find him soon.

* * *

Once Tuck had successfully crashed back into Charlie's room, Jo had gone back inside and helped the other girls return of all the furniture to where it belonged in the house. With the four of them working together, it only took about 20 minutes more for them to have the stairs completely cleared. As soon as they'd set the last half of the sectional back in to place, Emily ran up the stairs to check on Tuck and make sure nothing too bad had happened to him during the whole roof ordeal.

She found Tuck fast asleep on top of Charlie's bed, snoring, with his phone held loosely in his hand. The knees of his pants were a little scuffed up, but other than that he seemed fine. Emily narrowed her eyes at the phone curiously though, then put it to her ear tentatively, to see if Paige had stayed on the line.

"Baby?" Emily said.

"I knew you'd find me," Paige said quietly from the other end of the line.

"Did you and Tuck work things out?" Emily asked hopefully.

"We did," Paige answered. "I just hope he remembers it in the morning."

"Oh thank god," Emily said sighing. "The girls would have been so pissed if that was all for nothing."

"What exactly did you do?" Paige asked. "Tuck wasn't really making much sense when he explained the situation to me."

"How about this," Emily said, "I'll hang up Tuck's phone so I can leave it here with him and then I'll go down to my room and call you back from my phone."

"Mmm, that sounds good," Paige responded, groaning slightly as she stood up. "I'll put my pajamas on and meet you in bed."

The statement made Emily's heart flutter. She knew it was silly to get excited when Paige was 900 miles away and wouldn't really being meeting her in bed, but she didn't care. She just wanted to be with Paige so badly and this was how they could be together for now, so the words made her giddy. Just knowing Paige wanted her made her happy.

"Bye for a bit," Emily said as she hung up Tuck's phone and placed it gingerly back into his open palm. She kissed him on the forehead and whispered, "Sorry, Tuck," then turned out the light on her way downstairs, glad that Charlie wouldn't be upset that she had to sleep in Eden's bed.

5 minutes later, settled into her own bed in the basement, she called Paige back again and set in telling her what she had done that night in order to make Tuck call her.

"Wait, wait…"Paige interrupted her a few minutes into her story, "why didn't you just confront him and talk to him instead of planning this big stunt?"

"Well…that wouldn't have been very fun, would it?" Emily said, examining her motivations on the matter for the first time. "I've really been missing you lately. It was nice to have something to do to keep my mind off of you for the day."

Paige's heart broke a little when Emily said this and she made a silent promise to herself that she would work harder at trying to find the time to call and Skype with Emily, even though she had no idea when she was going to squeeze it in. She was already exhausted every day by the time she dropped into bed.

"God, you are so fucking sweet it hurts," Paige told Emily. "I'm sorry that being with me isn't exactly a walk in the park."

"It's okay," Emily smiled into the phone. "You're worth it. But back to my story—so Charlie lured him over with the promise of alcohol and whatever else it is that Charlie promises people, and while they were up in her room, me and Eden and Jo moved the couch and a bunch of other furniture and stuff onto the stairs. Seriously, there was not an inch of space left on the stairs. Oh my god, Paige. It was hilarious. You should have seen him! He was so pissed. God, if he'd been able to reach me he probably would've strangled me. I mean, looking back on it, Charlie probably shouldn't have gotten him drunk. I wasn't really thinking about him being with it enough to talk to you. I just wanted to prevent his escape."

Paige was laughing loudly by this point. "I can't believe you did all that! So how did he end up on the roof then?"

"Oh, jeez, well," Emily sighed, "Charlie was stuck upstairs with him, obviously, but she really didn't like that and she was fucking plastered, too, so she went out and jumped off the fucking roof, somehow, god, I don't even know how she did that. So the rest of us were talking and then she just burst in the front door in the middle of the argument! Eden nearly had a heart attack."

"I wish I could have seen that," Paige chuckled appreciatively, imaging the scene in her head. "I can't believe you did all of this just to get Tuck to talk to me. You're amazing, Emily. And also a little crazy, but I like it."

"Yeah, you make me a little crazy, I guess," Emily replied smiling at Paige's compliment, wishing she could kiss the girl. "I know how important Tuck is to you. I just wanted to help. Even if it was…an unconventional way."

Paige shook her head in disbelief. She had no idea how she'd ended up with someone as wonderful and passionate as Emily Fields. Her emotion towards the other girl flared up in her heart and before she could stop herself, the words had tumbled out of her mouth.

"I love you, Em."

There was silence for a few moments on the other end of the line. Emily had stopped breathing she was so shocked by the unexpected admission. Her heart was pounding madly in her chest. She could hardly believe Paige had just said that to her.

"You…you do?" she finally whispered.

"Don't sound so surprised," Paige laughed, her nerves sending the butterflies in her stomach into a frenzy.

"Paige…" Emily choked out, her throat suddenly very dry. "I love you, too."

Paige let out a breath she didn't realize she was holding and said, "Well, it's settled then. Posh and Ginger Spice ride off into the sunset together. Or wait…were you Sporty Spice?"

"What the fuck are even talking about, McCullers?" Emily asked, laughing loudly, a grin spreading over her face. She was happier than she'd been in weeks.


	38. Hospital Recon

Paige wasn't expecting the first letter. She wasn't someone who had ever had a pen pal or had ever written letters as a means of actual communication. The envelope was addressed to "Paige D. McCullers," though, so it wasn't difficult to guess who it was from. Emily must have asked Tuck for the address. It was the first piece of personal mail Paige had received since she had moved into her grandparents' house and it made her new reality seem a bit more cemented in her mind. This was her home and home is where your love letters are delivered. She wanted to rip open the little envelope immediately and devour this piece of Emily as soon as she'd laid hands on it, but she was late getting to the hospital as it was, so she made due with tucking the thing into her jeans pocket. Then in the car she set it gingerly on the passenger seat and pretended Emily was with her. Then she realized how sappy that was, so she moved it into her lap. If she was going to pretend Emily was there, why not put where she really wanted her to be?

It took Paige longer than normal to find a parking space, so even though she'd planned on reading the letter before she went in, she didn't feel like she had time anymore. She hesitated just a moment with the letter in her hand before she got out of the car then she stuffed it underneath the thermal Henley she was wearing and into her bra.

"When did I get so sappy?" she asked herself as she pulled on her corduroy and sheep's wool coat and stepped out of the car, heading up to her grandmother's room. She was half way there when she remembered the Tupperware container of cookies in the backseat of the car and had to go all the way back down to grab them.

By the time she walked into Hazel's room she was half an hour later than normal.

"You just missed Dr. Korlock," Hazel announced as she walked in. "He says that I'm a tough old bird and I can go home at the end of next week and start my outpatient rehab."

"He did not call you an old bird," Paige grinned, kissing her grandma on the cheek and settling herself down into the armchair next to her bed.

"No, I'm paraphrasing," Hazel chuckled. "But that's what he meant! He told me I've recovered a damn sight quicker than he thought I would. I've grown fond of him. I think I might actually miss him when I get to leave."

"You just think he's handsome," Paige laughed.

"How old do you think he is?" Hazel said, reaching for the container of cookies Paige had set on the bedside table. "Maybe we could set him up with Tuck. Is he seeing anyone right now?"

"Grandma…" Paige drawled out. "He's way too old for Tuck. It takes forever to become a doctor. He's gotta be at least 30. Probably older."

"Well they don't have to get married! They could just have a little fun together when Tuck comes home for Christmas! Maybe Tuck is into older men? You should ask him. Send him one of those text things you kids do."

Paige shook her head in disbelief. "I'm pretty sure most grandparents don't try to set their grandkids up on one-night stands. As far as I know, though, he doesn't have a boyfriend right now."

"Ask him. Ask him!" Hazel said shooing Paige into action with her hands. "And eat this, you look too skinny," she added, thrusting a cookie into Paige's half opened mouth.

Paige rolled her eyes, but pulled out her phone. "Fine," she huffed out around the cookie.

She typed out a quick message to Tuck that read, "Seeing anyone? Gram found a hot doctor for you."

Paige and Hazel munched on their cookies in silence for a few minutes while they waited for Tuck's response, but he didn't answer as quickly as Paige thought he would and soon Hazel had finished her cookie.

"Well, did you think of something to get Emily yet?" Hazel asked. The two had been brainstorming together for what Paige could get Emily for her birthday.

"Ugh," Paige exhaled loudly, tilting her head back in the chair. "No. I suck. I should just send her an apology note for being so lame."

"Oh, don't be so melodramatic," Hazel scolded. Paige had spent a great deal of time telling her grandmother the entire story of how she and Emily had met and gotten together, and Hazel could tell how smitten the two were with each other. "You could send that girl a pair of knee socks and she'd be thrilled."

"Knee socks?"

"That's what your grandfather gave me our first Christmas together," Hazel said. "Argyle," she added, nodding.

"And you still married him?" Paige laughed.

"It was early days," Hazel told her. "He got much better at gift giving."

"Well, I think I can do better than knee socks," Paige said, but there was a kernel of doubt still niggling at her.

Paige's phone buzzed against the bedside table then and she snatched it up. Tuck's response said, "Currently in between suitors. Send pics."

"Tuck wants pictures," Paige said, glancing up at Hazel.

"We'll have to do some recon on our walk today," Hazel replied. "Show me how to use that to take a picture."

* * *

Half an hour later, Paige had taught Hazel how to use her phone to take pictures and had hoisted her out of bed and into her wheelchair. It was lucky Paige was so in shape from her swim training. She could practically lift Hazel by herself and with her grandmother able to support more and more of her own weight as the days went by, the transfers from bed to chair and back were getting easier and easier. The two worked well together.

Paige pushed her out to the nurse's station first. "Hello ladies! And Evan, of course," Hazel announced cheerily. "Have a cookie."

Everyone in the geriatric ward knew Hazel and Paige very well by now, and while Paige was often quiet around the doctors and nurses, they all smiled at her warmly whenever they saw her. One of the nurses in particular always made it a point to greet Paige by name every day she was there.

Paige offered the tub of cookies around to all the nurses while Hazel glanced around the hallway for any signs of Dr. Korlock. There was a general chorus of "thank you"s and yummy noises that echoed around the room while they each took a cookie, and then the woman who always greeted Paige caught her eye.

"Thanks, Paige," she said sincerely with a warm smile.

"No problem," Paige mumbled back. The girl made her nervous. She never tried to actually start a conversation with Paige, but without fail, she always managed to hold her gaze for a few second and thank her by name. Paige couldn't figure out what this woman's game was.

"Is Doctor Korlock around?" Hazel asked loudly. "I forgot to ask him something when he came by my room this morning."

The nurse that had just thanked Paige glanced down at her watch before saying "He's probably over in the other geriatric wing by now. Over on the other side of the elevators." She pointed in the direction of the elevator bank as she said this.

"Thank you very much," Hazel said with a loud, whooping laugh as Paige spun her around in a circle quickly and took off in the other direction.

The two whizzed past the elevators and down a long connecting hallway with big windows stretching across both walls. Then Paige slowed down and they began to search in earnest for the cute doctor as they reached the next set of hallways that contained patient rooms. They were nearing the end of the first hall when Hazel heard his voice and whispered, "Quick, pull behind that column!"

Paige darted behind the column that was at the end of the hallway and pulled Hazel around the far side so she could lean around and see when Dr. Korlock came out of the patient's room he was currently in.

"Act natural," she hissed at Paige who turned and leaned against the pillar and crossed her arms before deciding that seemed suspicious and then letting them nervously swing by her sides. By the time Dr. Korlock came out of the room she was actually twiddling her thumbs, whistling, and staring at the floor. Luckily, he didn't seem to notice them and headed in the other direction toward the nurse's station in the middle of the double hallway.

"Don't become a professional poker player," Hazel laughed at Paige and as she pulled at her sleeve to bring her back over.

"Oh, be quiet. I would've pretended to be on my phone, but  _someone_ was using it to take pictures. I didn't know what to do with my hands!" Paige said, trying to defend her poor spying abilities. "Did you get any shots or not?"

"I got some good full body ones, now we just need to get his face," Hazel said. "Let's swing around the other hallway and come up. You offer him a cookie and I'll take care of the rest."

Paige narrowed her eyes at her grandmother, not sure what she was planning, but reluctantly pushed her wheelchair down towards the connecting hallway that formed a U with the one they were currently in, and headed back towards the nurses' station anyway. Unfortunately, the sort of friendly nurse that was overly fond of saying Paige's name seemed to have made her way over here, too, and was now speaking to Dr. Korlock. Paige really wanted to turn around. She had a very bad feeling about whatever antics her grandma was planning. Against her better judgment, though, she pushed forward as Hazel called out to the doctor.

"There you are, Dr. Korlock! I was hoping to run into you again. Would you like a cookie?" Hazel asked him genuinely.

"I'd love one of your delicious cookies. All the nurses go crazy over them. Your granddaughter is quite the baker," Dr. Korlock smiled up at Paige.

"Thanks," Paige smiled and ran her finger through her hair nervously. The nurse was staring at her again. "They're uh…a family recipe."

"I was also wondering if you would mind being in some pictures for me?" Hazel pressed on. "Paige is making a scrapbook of my time here at the hospital. She's so sentimental and she's taken quite a shine to you."

Paige felt like she was going to die. Her face was bright red. She felt so hot suddenly, she was sure she had contracted some horrible fever. Her face was torn between rage and horror. Dr. Korlock had an unwavering bedside manner, however, and he just chuckled jovially.

"Sure! My sister loves scrapbooking," he said, and Paige worked through her mortification and went to stand by the doctor at Hazel's insistence. "What is it about scrapbooking that you like so much, Paige?"

Paige moved to stand beside him and chewed on her lip nervously as he slung his arm around her shoulders. "I…I guess I just really like stickers," she croaked out and immediately felt a new wave of heat wash over her face from her furious blushing.

"Well who doesn't love a good sticker?" he said, smiling broadly as Hazel held the phone up to take the picture.

"Say cheese!" Hazel said happily, ignoring the scathing looks that Paige was shooting at her.

Paige was just about to move away from him, when Hazel spoke up again. "Let's get a few with the lovely nurses," she said, waving them into the shot.

Paige hung her head in defeat for a moment and before she knew it the entire nursing staff surrounded her and her grandma was happily snapping away with her phone.

It went on for a good twenty minutes. Hazel just had this effect on people. Before Paige knew it, everyone was posing for different pictures and laughing at the nicknames Hazel was using to direct them. Then Paige was handed the phone and everyone gathered in different configuration around Hazel in her wheelchair. The session ended in what Paige had to admit was an adorable photo of Dr. Korlock and Hazel giving each other bunnies ear. Paige couldn't help but smile and begin to enjoy herself as Hazel promised to get prints made for them to put up on the ward's bulletin board, patting their hands and cheeks as they all came over to give her a hug. Not for the first time in her life, Paige wished she had inherited even an ounce of her grandmother's social grace. People couldn't help but love Hazel McCullers. She always seemed to know what to say or do to put a person at ease. Eventually, Paige stepped back and let her just talk to the adoring nurses as they gushed over how much they were going to miss her when she went home.

After the hubbub died down, Paige wheeled Hazel back to her room and got her back into bed. Soon, Hazel was gently snoring with her head resting on a fluffy stack of pillows Paige had brought over from the house her the week before. Even though she was steadily gaining her strength back, Hazel was still easily worn out. Paige took the opportunity to sneak out. There was a small chapel on the ground floor of the hospital that Paige sometimes went to when the doctors were busy with her grandma. The chapel was quiet and comforting to Paige-the-pastor's-daughter, and very rarely was there anyone else in the place. It was a nice little hideout for an introvert to refuel. Paige hadn't forgotten about Emily's letter and she thought it would be the perfect secluded spot to read it.

* * *

The sounds of the busy hospital all fell away as Paige entered the mini-sanctuary and let the heavy door thunk closed behind her. There were a few fake stained glass windows on the walls and five pews on either side of the room with a small aisle between them. Up at the front of the room was a large cross mounted on the wall and small podium with a Bible opened on its surface. The chapel was empty, as Paige expected it would be. Her body relaxed a bit as she walked up to the third pew and sat down heavily on the long, red cushion that ran its length. She closed her eyes for a moment and rolled her head back and forth, cracking her neck several times before she reached into her shirt and pulled out Emily's letter.

"You always keep secret documents in your undergarments?" a snarky voice spoke seemingly out of nowhere, scaring the crap out of Paige.

"What the hell?" Paige shouted jumping up and looking around at the other pews. It was that nurse again that was always saying Paige's name. She was stretched out in the pew opposite her with one arm behind her head and a book opened in her hand. "Are you following me or something?" Paige barked at her, extremely unnerved by her sudden presence.

She seemed fairly young, this nurse, with sharp green eyes and hair that was pulled back into a messy bun. The nurse cocked one eyebrow and flashed a lopsided smile at Paige before she said, "You must not be very familiar with tailing people. I would have had to come in here  _after you_  to be following you. And I was definitely in here  _before_  you stomped in."

"I didn't stomp," Paige snarled at the woman.

"You're right," the nurse shot back. "It's probably just the unnaturally heavy footfalls caused by those Doc Martins." She flashed a smug smile at Paige who blushed for probably the 20th time that day.

"You know what?" Paige said cockily. "No more cookies for you."

The nurse sat up and laughed at the comment, shaking her head slightly. "You are so fucking cute," she said staring intently at Paige. "I definitely didn't take you for someone who would be into Dr. Korlock. Guess I was wrong."

Paige's eyebrows shot up and her eyes went wide. No one, well, no female, other than Emily, had hit on her in such an aggressive manner before and she kind of liked it.

"No, that was…ugh…my grandma, she's was trying to get pictures of him to send to my brother," Paige stuttered out, her stomach churning uncomfortably. For some strange reason, she didn't want this woman to think she was straight. "I'm a…I mean…um…women. I like women."

"Women," the nurse nodded and bit her bottom lip slightly, her eyes wandering up and down Paige's body, making the other girl gulp.

"I have one," Paige blurted out, feeling a little like she was being devoured by this conversation.

"A woman?" the nurse asked.

"A…yeah…a girlfriend," Paige said nervously, holding up the letter. "This is her," she added, feeling like she needed to prove it somehow.

The nurse gave here a pitying look and said, "God, I hate to break this to you,  _Paige,_ " she drew out her name like she was tasting it, "but that is a letter, not a woman."

Paige threw an exasperated look at her and rolled her eyes. "You know what I mean."

"Too bad," the nurse said, licking her lips slightly and sighing before she laid back down, put the book up in front of her face and started reading again.

Paige was a little thrown off by the abrupt end of the conversation. Maybe it was because she hadn't had much interaction with anyone near her own age that wasn't over the phone in weeks, but she felt the desire to keep talking to this woman. She decided not to look into this desire too closely as she let her eyes wander. just for a moment, over the other woman's scrub-clad body, her attention finally coming to rest on the book the woman was reading. She recognized the book as one Emily had shown her during one of their nights together at The Log. It was Emily's favorite poet, Anne…something.

"Anne…" Paige said out loud, the cover just a little too far away for her to read the author's last name.

"Wrong again," the nurse said without putting her book down. "My name's Adrienne."

"No," Paige clarified, gesturing at the book. "The book. It's Anne—"

"Carson, yeah," Adrienne said flippantly, still reading. Then she suddenly burst out laughing. "God, this conversation is like straight out of The L Word!"

"What?" Paige had no idea what she was talking about.

Finally Adrienne lowered the book. "Jenny and Marina," she said like it was the most obvious thing in the world, "they talk about Anne Carson in the first episode. They were talking about  _Eros the Bittersweet_ , though. This is  _The Autobiography of Red._ "

Paige just stared at her with a blank expression. "Sorry, I don't know what that is," she said sheepishly.

"Seriously?" Adrienne said with her eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Oh."

She sat up again, with a silent battle waging very obviously in her facial features. Eventually she seemed to throw Paige a bone, though, because rather than tease her, she said, "The L Word is a show about lesbians. It was on Showtime in the early 2000s. It was kind of groundbreaking. It's really big in the queer community. You should check it out. It's very… _educational_." On this last word, Adrienne's mischievous smirk made a reappearance on her face.

"Right," Paige said, trying to act cool. "I'm just, kind of new. At all this." She shrugged like it was no big deal. "Maybe I'll watch it."

"Just passed your test, huh?"

"There's a test?" Paige asked, a bit of panic creeping into her voice.

"Calm down," Adrienne said quickly, taking pity on Paige. "It was a joke."

"Yeah, I knew that," Paige said, crossing her arms and leaning back against the pew in front of her.

"So," Adrienne, thinking it was best to change the subject, "you like Anne Carson?"

"Um, I've actually never read it," Paige explained. "She's my girlfriend's favorite author, though."

"Oh yeah?" Adrienne asked, intrigued. "So are you guys going to the reading tomorrow night?"

"Oh, no, she lives in Illinois," Paige said then she realized what Adrienne had just said about the reading. "Wait, is Anne Carson coming  _here_?"

"Yep, she's reading from her new book and doing a signing," Adrienne said. "You could come with me, if you want, get a book signed for your girl."

"Holy shit," Paige said grinning. "That would be perfect! I've been losing my mind trying to think of something to get her for her birthday."

"Long distance, though," Adrienne commented, "that blows."

Paige suddenly remembered, coming down from her excitement about Anne Carson, that she had only met Adrienne, and really didn't know why she was offering to let Paige tag along to the event.

"It works just fine for us," Paige told her, protective walls coming back up quickly. "This isn't going to be some kind of date, okay? It's just…friendly. Right?"

"Got it, Sarge," Adrienne said giving Paige a small salute.

"Did you really just salute me?"

"Well, clearly, you're in charge here," Adrienne grinned.

* * *

After Adrienne and Paige had exchanged numbers so they could meet up the next day, Adrienne left to get back to work. Finally, Paige had a moment, completely alone, to read her letter from Emily. She opened it carefully and unfolded the paper and sat down again in the pew to read.

_Nov 5_

_Dear Paige,_

_My mother has always told me that the older a person gets, the faster time seems to pass for them. It makes sense. I am sure she's right, but so far it hasn't happened to me. Especially lately._

_I can still picture you here so clearly. Every room has become a room you used to be in. Sometimes when no one else is home, I close my eyes and walk around the house and imagine you are with me._

_All of my poems lately, no matter how they begin, seem to turn into poems about blindness. There are grooves in the railings of the staircases around campus from the multitudes of hands that have run across them. The steps themselves in the oldest building on campus are worn down in their centers into shallow little bowls that hold the feet like a lover. Babies can actually die from lack of touch. These are the types of things I find myself writing about._

_So far the only thing I've been able to say for certain is that yellow is the color of blindness, though I haven't been able to explain why yet._

_I know we talk on the phone and text all the time so I don't expect you to write back to me. I just love writing letters and wanted to send this to you because I'm thinking about you all the time anyway._

_I miss you baby._

_Love,_

_Em_

Paige smiled as she finished reading the letter. She couldn't help but love how deeply Emily felt about everything and also feel a little in awe over her ability to express herself. She wished she could put her feelings about things into words as easily as Emily seemed to. Behind the letter there was a poem by ee cummings that Emily had copied out for her.

_You are tired,_ _  
_ _(I think)_ _  
_ _Of the always puzzle of living and doing;_ _  
_ _And so am I._

_Come with me, then,_ _  
_ _And we'll leave it far and far away—_ _  
_ _(Only you and I, understand!)_

_You have played,_ _  
_ _(I think)_ _  
_ _And broke the toys you were fondest of,_ _  
_ _And are a little tired now;_ _  
_ _Tired of things that break, and—_ _  
_ _Just tired._ _  
_ _So am I._

_But I come with a dream in my eyes tonight,_ _  
_ _And knock with a rose at the hopeless gate of your heart—_ _  
_ _Open to me!_ _  
_ _For I will show you the places Nobody knows,_ _  
_ _And, if you like,_ _  
_ _The perfect places of Sleep._

_Ah, come with me!_ _  
_ _I'll blow you that wonderful bubble, the moon,_ _  
_ _That floats forever and a day;_ _  
_ _I'll sing you the jacinth song_ _  
_ _Of the probable stars;_ _  
_ _I will attempt the unstartled steppes of dream,_ _  
_ _Until I find the Only Flower,_ _  
_ _Which shall keep (I think) your little heart_ _  
_ _While the moon comes out of the sea._

If only she could, Paige thought, just run away and hide with Emily in this little world of poetry she was so adept at building around them. Emily was giving Paige the words she needed to get by, the words she never seemed to be able to find, and she felt such an aching relief rush through her as she held the paper carefully in her hands. Being in love was turning out to be more complicated than she had expected. It wasn't that things were bad in Paige's life. She just felt so stretched, like she was reaching for a dozen different things at the same time, and she knew it was a precarious balance she was trying to maintain. She was tired. Emily was right.


	39. Lesbian Orgy

The next night, Adrienne pulled up in front of Paige's house and honked. The two had decided it would be smarter to just drive into the city together so they wouldn't both have to pay for parking.

Walking out of the house, Paige saw Adrienne sitting in a brown, soft-top Jeep that looked like it was at least 20 years old. There were some very apparent rusted out holes in the metal body and the fabric top and sides of the Jeep only seemed to only be a little thicker than a tent as Paige pulled the handle on the passenger door and climbed in, onto the seat, which had a sheep's wool cover over it. The entire car had a very rustic feel, to put it mildly.

"Hey," Paige said. This was her least favorite part of making friends. The dreaded second meeting. The get-to-know-you question and answer session that inevitably had to happen in order for a real friendship to form. This exact thing was why Paige didn't have many friends. She was always hopelessly awkward during these sorts of situations. To be honest, she wouldn't ever have agreed to hang out with Adrienne if it weren't for Emily's birthday and this autographed book she was hoping to obtain.

Adrienne looked over at her in the dim light that was shining into the car from the porch light and smiled before her expression turned into one of slight concern. "Hey…are you okay? You look kind of green around the gills."

Adrienne definitely looked different than she did at the hospital. Paige had only ever seen her in scrubs with her hair pulled back. Tonight she was dressed in real clothes—just loose jeans, a nondescript t-shirt, and a navy blue pea coat, but they certainly looked better on her than blue scrubs—and she also had her hair down in loose waves that hung just above her shoulders. She didn't look like she had tried particularly hard to look good, but she had an easy, casual sort of attractiveness. It wasn't helping Paige's nervousness any. It wasn't like she was trying to impress this girl, though, so Paige decided to try a different tactic than she ever had when attempting to make a new friend: honesty.

"I think I probably have a mild form of social anxiety," Paige blurted out. "I've been dreading this all day."

"Oh," Adrienne said, looking Paige directly in the eyes for a second or two before she shrugged her shoulders. "Okay." She really didn't seem to give a shit that Paige was probably going to be an awkward turtle for the entire night. She simply flung her arm over on to the back passenger seat and twisted herself around so she could see to start backing out of the driveway again.

Neither of them spoke again until they'd been driving for about 10 minutes. Since Paige and her grandma lived in one of the suburbs in the outlying area of Philadelphia, they would have to take the highway into the city center to the bookstore where Anne Carson was appearing. Adrienne had just merged into the main lanes when the red Toyota that was driving] slightly ahead of them in the lane to their left, began to pull into their lane. The driver was probably trying to switch lanes without checking their blind spot. The other car came at them, but just before it crashed into the driver's side door Adrienne swerved, steering them momentarily into the shoulder of the road before quickly stepping on the gas and pulling back into the lane in front of the Toyota.

It had all happened in an instant, but Paige's heart was hammering wildly in her chest with fear, her hands, white knuckled, were clutching the edge of the dash board in front of her. She looked over at Adrienne, who seemed completely unfazed by the whole thing. Adrienne actually seemed to be  _laughing_  a little at Paige as she looked back at her.

"Close one," Adrienne chuckled. "If you need to puke, aim for the hole," she said then, gesturing toward the floor underneath Paige, where, sure enough, a chunk of the floorboard roughly the size of a human head was completely rusted through. Paige actually recoiled back from the small bit of pavement she could see streaming below them through the hole. She hadn't yet noticed it in the dark of the cab.

"Holy shit," Paige breathed, tucking her feet safely into the seat with the rest of her body. "How'd you react so fast?" Paige's heart was still slowly returning to a normal rate.

"I was gonna be a racecar driver, actually, before I decided to go to nursing school," Adrienne answered.

"Seriously?" Paige asked.

Adrienne gave a noncommittal grunt and then said, "I also spend my days off playing Russian roulette. "

"Right."

"And I can juggle."

"Are you trying to be funny?" Paige asked, not really sure what to make of the woman sitting next to her.

"You know that game, two truths and a lie?" Adrienne asked.

Paige nodded.

"That's kind of like, my whole life," she shrugged. "You have a little social anxiety, I'm kind of a pathological liar…well, I don't know. That's a little dramatic. I don't do it at the hospital, obviously. Just recreationally."

"You're a recreational liar," Paige said evenly.

"Exactly," Adrienne told her. "I just really love shitting with people. I think it's really funny. Gotta keep people guessing."

"This should be an interesting night," Paige responded, her voice heavy with sarcasm. It was then that she realized, however, that Adrienne's stream of bullshit had put her quite at ease. Paige was too busy trying to decide what was true to be nervous or awkward.

* * *

The rest of the night went by surprisingly quickly. They got to the bookstore, stood at the back of the crowd to listen to Anne Carson read from her new book, and then stood in line for almost two and a half hours before Paige finally got her turn with the author. The woman had been rather stern looking, but Paige explained about Emily's birthday and Carson was nice enough to write a short personal message in the book before she signed her name and slid it back over to Paige.

Paige was ecstatic over her success the entire way home. She kept opening the book and reading the inscription over and over again, grinning so wide that her cheeks actually started to hurt. Adrienne was easy to be around. Once Paige had figured out to not take most of what she said seriously, Adrienne proved herself to be one of the most relaxed people Paige had ever encountered. She didn't pry and ask personal questions, just joked with Paige most of the time and ribbed her good-naturedly over her lack of what Adrienne called "lesbian knowledge."

"What is this band called again?" Paige asked when they were nearly back to her house. Adrienne had a collection of mix tapes that she kept in a milk crate in the backseat because the Jeep only had a tape player. Paige had picked one out for the drive back, earning a loud laugh from Adrienne when she had selected "the gayest music" she owned.

"Oh lord, McCullers," Adrienne said shaking her head in disbelief. "You're lucky you met me. I clearly have a lot to teach you. This is Tegan and Sara."

"So they're gay," Paige deduced.

"One's gay, one's bisexual," Adrienne corrected her. "That reminds me, I brought you the first season of The L Word in case you wanted to borrow it. It's back there somewhere," Adrienne said, gesturing into the backseat. "It's so ridiculous, you're going to love it."

"You act like it's the Lesbian Bible or something," Paige said skeptically.

"You don't have to watch it if you don't want to. I don't care," Adrienne told her. She really seemed like she didn't care, either.

"No, I'll watch it," Paige backtracked. Her curiosity had been sparked. "I just don't get what the big deal is. I mean, if it's ridiculous, why do you own it?"

"Imagine you were purple," Adrienne said suddenly, as she pulled back into Paige's driveway.

"What?"

"I'm spelling it out for you, kid," Adrienne told her. She'd been calling her "kid" since Paige had revealed she was only 21 when they were waiting in line at the bookstore. "Imagine your skin is purple, okay? And everyone on the TV shows you've seen, they're all…I dunno, orange. And then somebody finally makes a show where the entire cast is purple. And a few are blue. And they're all super hot. Wouldn't you watch that show? Even if the writing was a little…unrealistic sometimes? It's about visibility. Representation."

"There are gay characters on the shows I watch," Paige replied, getting the point easily.

"Yeah, well, there didn't used to be," Adrienne told her, pulling the DVDs out of the back seat. "And The L Word is part of the reason that there are gay characters on TV now."

"Any other lesbian knowledge I need to know before I go in?" Paige asked jokingly.

"Yes, actually," Adrienne deadpanned. "If you turn 5 women, you get a toaster oven."

"You just  _get_ one…how?" Paige played along.

"They send one to you," Adrienne told her.

"Who?"

"The Queen."

"Of what, England?"

"No. Of the lesbians."

"And who the fuck is Queen of the Lesbians?"

"Ellen. Duh."

"Good night, Adrienne," Paige said, getting out of the Jeep. "Thanks for taking me with you."

"No problemo, baby dyke," Adrienne smiled widely as Paige pursed her lips, unsure if she should be irritated by the term or take it as a compliment of sorts.

* * *

Emily was with the rest of the girls in the dining room, doing some late night studying and paper writing when she got a text from Paige that read, "WE HAVE TO SKYPE NOW."

"You guys wanna take a break? Paige really needs to Skype for some reason," Emily announced to the room.

"Oh thank god!" Charlie said dramatically, throwing her economics books into the corner. "My brain is rotting. I'm going to make popcorn." She wandered into the kitchen and started banging around immediately.

Eden and Jo both agreed to a study break as well, so Emily opened Skype on her laptop and video-called Paige.

"Hey, the girls are here as well, is that okay?" Emily asked as soon as she saw Paige's face.

"Yeah, that's fine," Paige waved a hand dismissively as she said this. "I have a bone to pick with you!"

"What did I do?" Emily asked curiously, though she was smiling. She could tell from Paige's tone that she wasn't mad at her.

"The L Word?!" Paige shouted, throwing both of her hands in the air.

"What about it?" Emily asked, laughing.

"You knew about it?" Paige asked incredulously.

"Yes…" Emily answered tentatively.

"And you didn't tell me about it?!" Paige replied.

"I didn't know I was supposed to tell you about it. Sorry," Emily told her. "I didn't really think about it."

"What other lesbian secrets have you been keeping from me?" Paige asked.

"She's keeping a lot of lesbian secrets from you, Paige," Eden suddenly piped up, leaning forward in her chair next to Emily so that Paige could see her. "We sit around and laugh about it over here all the time. Just earlier, we watched  _Fried Green Tomatoes_ and then we had an orgy. Too bad you missed it!"

Jo leaned her head into the frame then and said, "It was so hot. We could have used a fifth, though. I mean, our orgies, they used to be more fun. But now that Charlie and Eden are together, it's like, they always end up pairing off, and then Emily and I are stuck together. I mean, I wouldn't even call it an orgy! It's just two couples that happen to be having sex in the same room."

Charlie wandered into the room again then, though, Paige could only see her from the neck down. She was holding a large green bowl of popcorn that she was dousing in a great deal of honey from a squeeze bottle shaped like a bear.

"What are we talking about?" Charlie asked.

"Orgies and lesbian secrets," Paige supplied.

"Ooh," Charlie said in interest, leaning down so that her face was now in the frame. "Our orgies?"

"Charlie…god," Emily mumbled, slightly annoyed at Charlie's shoving into the table in front of her. "Will you sit down?"

Charlie happily plopped down in Emily's lap and began to alternately shove handfuls of sticky popcorn into her own mouth and then pop a few pieces in Emily's mouth over her shoulder.

"Yes, our orgies," Jo said solemnly, nodding.

"They really have gotten a little too predictable," Charlie agreed, shaking her head and feeding Jo some of the popcorn. Jo licked the honey off of Charlie's fingers dramatically, taunting Paige.

Jo quirked her eyebrows over at Paige on the laptop before she said to Charlie, "Mmm, thanks baby. I love it when you're all sticky."

"I hate all of you," Paige announced moodily.

"Come have sex with us Paige!" Eden whined. "We miss you and your hot ass."

"Okay, okay," Emily said finally, laughing. "That's enough torturing Paige. I'm gonna go downstairs and to talk to her since you three can't be nice."

"Fine!" Eden huffed, pulling Charlie over onto her own lap so that Emily could stand up. "A three-some it is, then. Jo, where did you leave the handcuffs? I'm in a bondage sort of mood."

"I think they got kicked under the couch last time," Jo replied.

"Say good night, guys," Emily said walking into the kitchen.

"GOOD NIGHT PAIGE!" they all chorused.

Emily headed down to her room and lay down on her bed, her head propped up in her hand so she could continue talking to her girlfriend.

"You don't really have orgies with them do you?" Paige asked quietly.

Emily laughed. "Don't be silly," she chuckled. "I love my friends, but not like I love you."

"Well how would I know!" Paige huffed. "There are all sorts of gay culture things I don't know about."

Emily rolled her eyes at Paige's ridiculousness. "Where is all of this coming from anyway? Who told you about The L Word?"

"I met this nurse, at the hospital with my grandma," Paige said slowly. "We uh, just got to talking about some stuff. And then we hung out again tonight."

"Oh," Emily said, noticing the hesitancy in Paige's voice. "Is she gay?"

"Yeah, she is," Paige told her.

"How did…meet her?" Emily prodded further, unsure if she should be worried about this unnamed nurse.

"I…I think she might have been hitting on me," Paige admitted. "But I told her about you! Right away, I told her I had a girlfriend."

"Okay. So you know this girl wants to sleep with you and you're hanging out with her anyway?" Emily asked in an icy tone.

"I don't…it's not like that, Em," Paige backtracked. "You know I don't make friends very easily. And she's nice. We're just friends, I promise. It's been nice just talking to someone…you know, young."

Emily's face softened a bit. She knew Paige was basically all alone in Philly right now, with only her grandma and parents for company. She didn't want to be that kind of possessive, controlling girlfriend who made Paige feel guilty for just hanging out with someone. So she pushed her jealousy down as best she could, and the irrational desire she was feeling to inquire about the nurse's attractiveness so she could assess the threat level this woman posed against her.

"I trust you," Emily told her gently. "So what did you and…"

"Adrienne," Paige supplied.

Emily felt herself bristle a bit at the nurse's name, but pressed on. "What did you and Adrienne do tonight?"

"I…" Paige felt some panic rising up in her chest. She couldn't tell Emily what they did tonight without ruining her birthday present. This conversation wasn't going well. She rubbed her neck nervously, casting around in her mind for something she could tell Emily. The panic was written all over her face, though, and Emily could read her easily.

"Paige, what did you do with her?" Emily asked again in a worry-laden voice.

"I'm sorry, Em, I…can't…I can't tell you," Paige said, knowing how bad this all must sound to her girlfriend.

"Why?" Emily asked, holding back tears now.

"It's not anything bad…it's just a surprise, for  _you,_ " Paige finally managed to not make herself seem so guilty. "It's almost your birthday in case you forgot. Adrienne told me about this thing and then…accompanied me so I could get you something."

"Oh," Emily breathed a heavy sigh of relief, and then smiled slightly. "God, you scared me for a minute."

"Em, I don't want anybody but you," Paige reassured her, feeling bad that she had worried Emily so much. "What are doing for your birthday anyway, as long as we're on the subject?"

"I think the girls have something planned," Emily replied. "I told them I didn't want a big party. Just us and Tuck, you know. I always have more fun when it's just us. I left it in their capable hands to plan something."

"So orgy, then?" Paige deadpanned.

Emily burst out laughing. "Yeah, probably."


	40. Into the Night

Emily wasn't a person who was ever truly surprised. She could always tell, as a child, when her parents were planning something special for her, or when, as a teenager Spencer, Hanna, and Aria were trying to pull off some shenanigans for her birthday. Maybe she was just too observant for her own good. Or maybe she was self-centered, because she only noticed things like this when they concerned her. Either way, when she woke up on the morning before her birthday, Thursday morning, she didn't notice anything weird. Her friends all wished her an early happy birthday with promises that they would celebrate later that night, when midnight rolled around. She had told them she didn't want a party, but in the back of her mind, Emily was almost sure they were planning something, and that it would either be that night or the following.

This term, Emily was taking a class on Dylan Thomas. It wasn't a particularly difficult class, but it was very time consuming. They were reading nearly everything the man had ever written as well as two different biographies on Thomas' life. Lately she felt like she was spending all of her spare time closed in her windowless bedroom just to complete the required reading. Her eyes would burn when she came up into the rest of the house during breaks and Eden had started making comments about Vitamin D deficiencies.

The thing Emily really liked about the class was that the only met once a week, from 7-11pm on Thursday nights. She had morning class on Tuesday and Thursday, Greek and Roman Love Stories, as well and another in the afternoon, Prosody. So basically, when Emily walked out of the house on Thursday morning, she didn't return until 11:15 that night. It was her longest, most grueling day of the week, but she always survived, and she didn't mind it because she didn't have any classes on Monday, Wednesday or Friday. This just happened to be how Vallance designed their undergraduate program—it was run on 9 week long trimesters and each student took three classes per trimester.

After her Dylan Thomas class let out that night, Emily was mentally exhausted. She bundled herself up and hefted her heavy messenger bag onto her shoulder. Emily loved the campus at night. It was deserted and forlorn, looking like a smudged oil painting in the fuzzy glow that the old lampposts shed. It was a mixture of hard and soft. The cold wind bit at her exposed face, but there was only the sound of muffled footsteps heading off in different directions. It also reminded her of the walk around campus she and Paige had taken over a year ago on the night they had first met. Emily had tried to capture it all in a poem many times, but the results always felt cliché and underwhelming.

As she walked home, enjoying the frosty stillness, she began to wonder if the girls were waiting to surprise her at home. It would be the perfect time to do so since she had been out, literally, all day long. They would have had plenty of time to prepare anything – a cake, decorations, mixed drinks. The closer she got to The Log, the more sure Emily felt that there was probably  _something_ waiting for her when she got there. And although she'd told the girls she didn't want them to do anything for her, she found herself getting excited and thinking that maybe a party was exactly what she needed to take her mind off missing her girlfriend.

As she rounded the corner and The Log came into view, her certainty about the party was cemented; the lights downstairs were all off and that rarely happened when anyone was home. They were probably all just waiting to jump out at her when she walked in. Emily could hardly stop herself from smiling as she hurried up the walkway to the front door. She had to look surprised, though, she reminded herself, so she stopped for moment and composed herself before she opened the door.

Emily walked in to the pitch-black house and shut the door behind her, rather more loudly than usual. Then she waited. The seconds seemed to hang in the air around her, like dust in a shaft of light. But nothing happened. No lights came on and no one popped out and yelled "Surprise!" Emily was genuinely confused. She moved on into the living room and flipped on the overhead light. Other than looking a little tidier than normal, the room was completely empty. Where was everyone?

Emily relieved herself of her book bag and then peeled off her coat, discarding them both on the sectional. She sat down for a moment then and glanced around her own living room, unsure of what to do. She thought she might call Paige, but it was nearly 12:30 in Philadelphia, and when the two had spoken during Emily's break 2 hours into her class, Paige had said she was going to bed soon. Emily didn't want to wake her.

Some banging noises above her caught Emily's attention, and she thought they sounded like they were coming from Eden's room, so she headed upstairs to investigate. She was just about to knock on Eden's door and see what she was up to when a loud moan and string of obscenities met her ears. It was definitely Charlie's voice; so that was what Eden was doing. Emily moved over to Jo's closed door instead and knocked very quietly. There was no response, so she eased the door open a crack. From the chink of light that spread into the room from the hallway, Emily could clearly see Jo, curled up in her bed, fast asleep. Feeling rather dejected, Emily closed Jo's door again carefully and went back downstairs.

She contemplated just going to sleep herself, but she wasn't really tired now, and she was feeling rather sad that her friends had apparently forgotten about her birthday. Instead she pulled out her FRIENDS Season 8 DVD set, popped in a disc, and started watching The One Where Everybody Turns 30. She thought that particular episode was appropriate. As the theme song started playing, she hurried into the kitchen and grabbed a shot glass and a full bottle of Bacardi. Emily was determined to celebrate. She was turning 21 and damn it all if she wasn't going to have a good time. Even if she was all by herself.

She was well on her way too, one episode and 5 shots in, when, just a few minutes before midnight, all three of her friends showed up in the living room. Jo was rubbing sleep out of her eyes and yawning. Charlie was looking sort of rumpled and her hair was wild and messy. And Eden, well, to someone else, she may have appeared completely composed, but Emily recognized the same triumphant gleam in her eye that was usually only sparked when she received a standing ovation.

"Well, well, well," Emily said, feeling emboldened by her warm, rum buzz. "Remembered it's my birthday, have you? And with," she glanced at her phone, "2 minutes to spare."

"I take it you are slightly intoxicated at the moment," Eden said shrewdly, "but, if you want to avoid looking like a completely ungrateful asshole in about 5 minutes, you should shut your mouth."

"Edie!" Charlie said in a scolding tone, slightly shocked at the bite in her girlfriend's tone. "Sorry, Em, she goes on these post-sex power trips sometimes. She is right, though."

"We didn't forget about your birthday," Jo said simply.

"I'll go get the present," Charlie said with a smile and ran out to the closet in the dining room. She returned a few moments later with a large box wrapped in sparkly green paper, which she sat down on the coffee table in front of Emily.

Seeing it, Emily immediately felt guilty that she had assumed the worst about her friends.

"Time check!" Eden screamed, holding her watch up in front of her face and scaring Emily slightly. "15 seconds!"

Emily poured herself a double shot and listened to Eden count down the seconds. Charlie grabbed the bottle of Bacardi from the table so she could join in with Emily's celebratory shot. At exactly midnight, she threw the shot back, and Charlie did the same with the bottle, letting out a loud "Woo!" as the alcohol burned down her throat. Then Eden started singing Happy Birthday, but it was in French for some reason. The other two just joined in with regular, old English, Emily laughing loudly at their confused faces.

"Open it, open it!" Charlie chanted as soon as Eden had cut off her last note. "It's from all of us."

Emily pulled the box toward her eagerly, grinning from ear to ear, and feeling herself slip from buzzed into outright drunk as she did so. She ripped the paper off with a little more zest than she would if she were sober and then tore off the tape and opened the plain, cardboard box.

Emily gasped when she saw what was inside. It was an old typewriter, probably from the 1940s. It was gorgeous, with a cream colored base and gleaming, black keys. She lifted it tenderly out of the box, feeling how heavy it was, and set it down gingerly on the coffee table beside the box.

"You guys," Emily said breathlessly, running her fingers over the keys. "It's beautiful!"

She beamed up at her friends who were all watching her carefully.

"Thank you so much," Emily said, looking at each of them in turn.

"Type something on it!" Eden ordered her.

"There's some paper in the box, too," Jo explained and joined her on the couch.

Emily pulled the small stack of typewriter paper out of the box, and rolled a sheet of it into the machine. She was just about to start typing when Charlie said, "Wait! Take another shot first," and poured some more rum into her shot glass. Emily threw it back and then began pounding out the first thing that came into her mind; a short poem by William Carlos Williams.

"Ooh, it sounds so good," Eden commented as Emily clacked away on the keys.

"We thought it was equal parts pretentious and sexy," Charlie told her, laughing, and taking another swig straight from the bottle.

"You like it?" Jo asked earnestly from beside her.

Emily grinned at her and tackled her back onto the couch with a hug.

"I love it," she said, squeezing Jo as hard as she could.

"Ouch!" Jo protested underneath her, grumbling. "Let me up."

"Yeah, come on," Eden announced, with a maniacal look in her eye. "We have to get ready to go!"

Emily hoisted herself up off of Jo and looked over at Eden quizzically. "What are you talking about? Are we going to a bar?"

"Um, no," Jo answered her. "We're leaving for the weekend, actually. We won't be home until Monday, so you should go pack. Tuck is going to be here with the car in like 20 minutes."

Emily looked around at all of them and each of her friends had on similar broad smiles and excited expressions on their faces.

"Are you serious?" she asked quietly.

Eden nodded enthusiastically at her while Charlie began bouncing on the balls of her feet.

"Where are we going?" Emily asked them breathlessly, not daring to hope for what she wanted most. Charlie put her out of her misery quickly, though.

"Where do you think dumb ass!?" Charlie shouted. "We gotta get you laid for your birthday. Philly or bust, baby!"

Emily squealed like a little schoolgirl as she jumped up off the couch and flung herself at Eden and Charlie, pulling them into a chokingly tight hug. Then she launched herself back onto Jo on the couch.

"Oh my god! Thank you, thank you, thank you. I get to see Paige!" she burbled happily. Then she started tearing up. "I think I'm a little drunk," she announced then, making an excuse for her tears as she sniffed slightly. Really though, she just couldn't believe how amazing her friends were, that they would plan something like this for her. She wiped at her face with her shirtsleeves and laughed at how sappy she was feeling. "You guys are the best," she said in disbelief.

"Go pack," Jo told her with a warm smile.

"Take another shot first, though," Charlie told her, pouring her some more, and taking another long swig herself. "It's a 14 hour drive. We're going to need it."

"Oh, and Paige doesn't know we're coming, so," Eden made a zipping motion across her mouth. "Tuck cleared it all with his Grandma Hazel," she continued, explaining the situation. "But we thought Paige could use a nice surprise, hmm?"

Emily grabbed Eden's face and kissed her on the forehead before running out of the room to pack.

* * *

30 minutes later, Tuck arrived in the car he sometimes borrowed from a friend of his.

"You're late," Eden said, but she was smiling.

"My sincerest apologies, madam," Tuck told her. "Rehearsal ran late. You bitches ready?"

"Fuck yeah we are!" Charlie yelled. She had continued to drink from the bottle of rum until they heard Tuck pull up. Now, she ran down to the car, leaving Eden to grab both of their bags off the ground and take them to the trunk. "Shot gun!" Charlie shouted again.

"No, no, no," Jo said. She was taking the first driving shift. "Drunkies sit in the backseat."

Emily was the last one out, and she dropped her own small duffel bag on the ground before turning to shut and lock the front door. Tuck took the opportunity to bombard her from the back with a bear hug.

"Happy Birthday, beautiful," he said as he lifted Emily off the ground. "Were you surprised?"

Emily turned around when Tuck placed her back on the ground. "Uh, yes…I was like, WHAT?"

Tuck laughed loudly at her. "I see you've already hit the bottle."

"I thought I had been forgotten, so I started some sad drinking, which then became happy drinking," Emily explained. "I was a fool! My friends are angels. Clearly. Look at this angel face!" She reached out and pinched Tuck's cheek as she said this.

"I'm glad you think so, because all you're getting from me for you birthday is gas money!" Tuck grabbed Emily's bag off the ground for her and moved toward the car. "Well, technically," he threw over his shoulder, "it's from my parents, too, but they don't really know they're giving you anything." He grimaced a little, but shrugged his shoulders.

"Surprise!" Emily yelled throwing up her hands and giggling. Then she climbed into the backseat with Charlie and Eden.

After all the bags were stowed in the trunk, Tuck slammed it closed. He then threw the keys over to Jo and she hopped in the drivers seat while Tuck slipped into the passenger seat.

Charlie was already attempting to sing 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall through the hand that Eden had clamped over her mouth.

"I had sex with you so you would CALM DOWN," Eden was saying wearily to Charlie.

Jo started the car and drove a few blocks down to the town's Main Street. At the stop sign, she looked over at Tuck expectantly.

"So, which way is Philadelphia?" Jo asked.

"Shit, I knew I forgot something," Tuck mumbled. "Hold on, I'll Google map it on my phone."

Once he had the directions pulled up on his phone screen, he yelled, "Left!" triumphantly, and pointed dramatically out into the distance.

Jo pressed the accelerator and they headed toward the dark fields that surrounded Solomon, off into the night.


	41. The Hours

**Hour 1**

"There's nothing to be ashamed of, Charlie," Jo said, grinning, very aware that she was stirring the pot.

"I'm not ashamed," Charlie huffed, "because I'm not one. End of story."

"Oh you totally are," Emily joined in.

"Edie, come on," Charlie pleaded with her girlfriend. "Back me up here!"

"Nope," Eden replied in a haughty tone. "I plead the fifth."

"Ha!" Jo said in triumph. "You totally are."

"She technically didn't confirm or deny," Tuck offered. "However, given the state of the rest of their relationship, I'm going to have to agree: you totally are. I mean, come on, Eden's obviously in charge."

"I am not a bottom!" Charlie exploded. "I'm a…rough and assertive…terrifyingly dominant top!"

Everyone in the car, except for Charlie, burst out laughing at this. Charlie just sat back and crossed her arms over her chest, adamant in her assertion.

"Okay, no one is buying that," Tuck finally wheezed out. "It's okay! I'm a bottom, too." Tuck turned around and waggled his eyebrows up and down suggestively at Charlie.

"Don't worry," Emily told Charlie consolingly, making a crossing motion over her heart. "We won't tell anyone. You're badass image is safe with us."

* * *

**Hour 2**

"The next rest stop isn't for 20 miles," Tuck said, reading the sign that just whizzed past them.

"What?!" Eden screamed. "I can not wait 20 miles!"

"How do you already have to pee?" Charlie asked. "You weren't even drinking with us. And by the way, I'm still drunk."

"I wish I was drunk," Tuck said, sadly.

"I'm drunk," Emily offered. "Yeah, I'm pretty drunk."

"What do you want me to do, Eden?" Jo asked. "Should I pull over?"

"You actually expect me to pee on the side of the road like some kind of criminal?" Eden asked incredulously.

"Well it's either that, or you hold it for 20 miles…19 miles," Jo told her. "Wait…since when do criminals pee on the side of the road?"

"They have to do it when they escape from prison and they're on the run," Eden explained, gesturing wildly in the backseat and accidently smacking Charlie across the chest.

"You could use it as an acting exercise," Charlie offered, rubbing her shoulder.

"Oooh, I like that," Eden said, excitement dripping from her words. "Let's build my character background!"

"Should I keep driving or…" Jo asked. But no one seemed to be listening to her.

"You should be a man," Emily said immediately, no stranger to this game with Eden. "Statistically, there are more males in the prison system."

"And you should be a murderer!" Tuck said loudly.

"You've been in the system for 10 years, planning your escape!" Charlie yelled.

"You have a friend on the outside who's been smuggling…arsenic in to you through…" Jo added. She was never very good at this game.

"Protein powder!" Charlie screamed. "You were a body builder before you went to prison."

"And you killed your trainer in a steroid induced rage," Emily said with a manic gleam in her eye, lunging across Charlie's lap to grab Eden's hand.

"He was sleeping with your wife," Tuck added. "You caught them together one day when you came home from the beach. You lived in California near Venice Beach."

"I walked into the bedroom, and there they were!" Eden said, anger coursing through her. "Alfonso and Lilly, in our bed! I ripped him away from her, threw him to the ground, and strangled the life out of him with my bare hands!"

"Pull the car over Jo, she's ready!" Emily said suddenly.

Jo swerved over onto the shoulder quickly and Eden threw her door open and jumped out, running a little ways into the barren field by which they'd stopped.

"Should I be worried?" Tuck asked, into the now silent car.

"In the general scheme of things? Or with Eden?" Jo asked.

"With Eden," Tuck clarified. "That was kind of scary."

"Oh yeah, you should definitely be worried," Jo answered.

* * *

**Hour 3**

R.E.M.'s greatest hits album was filtering quietly through the car now and Charlie was curled up into Eden's side. They were both fast asleep.

Emily had her phone out, but she was using it as a flashlight to read a book that was propped open in her lap.

"What are you reading?" Tuck asked from the front seat, turning around slightly to look at her.

"Guess," Emily said dryly.

"Hmmm," Jo said, pretending to think, with her hands firmly at 10 and 2 on the steering wheel. "It couldn't be Dylan Thomas, could it?"

"The one and only," Emily laughed. "A finer drunk bastard there never was."

"I've never really read much of him besides that 'Do not go gentle into that good night,' one," Tuck said. "Is he any good?"

"He had his moments, for sure," Emily said. "Want to hear one?"

"Yeah, read us your favorite, Em," Jo told her.

Emily flipped through the pages of her book until she found what she was looking for and then cleared her throat a bit, glancing to her right to make sure she wasn't disturbing Charlie and Eden.

Then she read in a voice just above a whisper,

" _Being but men, we walked into the trees_ _  
_ _Afraid, letting our syllables be soft_ _  
_ _For fear of waking the rooks,_ _  
_ _For fear of coming_ _  
_ _Noiselessly into a world of wings and cries._ _If we were children we might climb,_ _  
_ _Catch the rooks sleeping, and break no twig,_ _  
_ _And, after the soft ascent,_ _  
_ _Thrust out our heads above the branches_ _  
_ _To wonder at the unfailing stars._ _Out of confusion, as the way is,_ _  
_ _And the wonder, that man knows,_ _  
_ _Out of the chaos would come bliss._ _That, then, is loveliness, we said,_ _  
_ _Children in wonder watching the stars,_ _  
_ _Is the aim and the end._ _Being but men, we walked into the trees._ "

* * *

**Hour 4**

Jo had pulled into a 24-hour gas station a few miles back and she, Tuck, and Emily had filled up the car, used the bathroom, and then bought some coffee and energy drinks to keep them up. Emily knew she didn't really  _have_ to stay awake, but she was far too excited at the prospect of seeing Paige to be able to fall asleep yet and she was still a little drunk. Eden and Charlie hadn't budged from their snuggled up positions in the backseat.

Now, Tuck was driving, Jo had taken the backseat, and Emily was serving as co-pilot. It seemed like they were the only people on the road. Their headlights were cutting a sharp triangle out into the darkness and even the streetlights were few and far between. The world seemed stark and simple. There was nothing they had to do but keep going, and for once, it seemed easy.

Tuck had only been driving for about half an hour. Emily was sort of reading, but more often just staring out the window at the bright moon and the black silhouettes the trees were cutting into the sky. Something about driving, being in the car, always made her extra thoughtful. Something caught her attention, though; two pin-pricks of light, reflected back at them, just on the side of the road. It took her a moment to realize what it was.

Tuck was glancing down to grab his coffee from the console between the seats. He hadn't seen the deer. Emily was sure of it. She put her arm out and grabbed his hand, firmly and said, "Tuck, _stop the car."_ She didn't yell, but her tone was absolutely commanding.

Without even really thinking, Tuck pressed on the brakes and the car screeched to halt just as the deer darted out in front of them. Emily glanced around outside to make sure there weren't any more around, and then relaxed her hold on Tuck's hand.

"Damn," Tuck let out shakily, looking in awe at Emily next to him. "Paige should marry you."

"Oh, she will," Emily said, only sort of joking, a gentle smile playing across her face.

* * *

**Hour 5**

"Look, all I'm saying is, Frodo was kind of an asshole," Tuck stated matter-of-factly.

"He saved all of Middle-Earth! How was he an asshole?" Emily asked incredulously.

"He just took all the credit!" Tuck said, heatedly. "He was like, 'Oh yeah, it was really hard, but I threw the ring into the fires of Mt. Doom. That was all me.' I mean did he even tell anyone what really happened when they got in there?"

"That wasn't his fault," Emily retorted. "The ring had a hold of him. He  _wanted_  to destroy it."

"Gollum bit his finger off! And then he nearly died trying to get the ring away from him!" Tuck said. "I mean, sure, take the credit for getting the ring  _to_ Mordor, but destroying it was pure luck."

"Well, Frodo did most of the work," Emily said firmly.

"No, Sam did most of the work. And Frodo was an asshole to him," Tuck replied. "Sam made him delicious stew in the wilderness and Frodo was a bitch to him and took Gollum's side. If my boyfriend ever did that to me, I'd leave his ass."

"Sam and Frodo weren't boyfriends, though," Emily said, side-eying Tuck.

Tuck quirked a disbelieving eyebrow at her, and then said, "We must have seen different movies."

* * *

**Hour 6**

"Did Gandalf just never ask what the fuck happened to Gollum? Huh?" Tuck said, eyes wide, shaking his head slightly. "Like it was just some weird coincidence that Gollum happened to perish in the molten lava of Mt. Doom at the same exact moment that the ring did. "

"Oh my god, you have to stop talking about this," Emily said wearily, leaning her head against the window.

* * *

**Hour 7**

Around 7:45 am, somewhere in Ohio, everyone in the backseat had woken up and everyone decided food was very necessary, and a change of driver, so they found the nearest McDonald's and stopped there at Charlie's insistence.

"The best thing about road trips is that you have an excuse to eat horrible food," Charlie said, happily stuffing her second Sausage McGriddle in her mouth, now sitting in the front passenger seat.

Eden was driving and, in between taking bites of her sandwich, Charlie was feeding her spoonfulls of yogurt parfait.

"Enjoy it while you can," Eden said, pointing a menacing finger into Charlie's chest. "Because on Tuesday morning, you're going back to cereal."

"I can't believe you're not hung over," Emily said to Charlie, enjoying her greasy hashbrown. "You drank twice as much as I did in like 45 minutes."

"I feel like I'm more hung over than you and I didn't drink anything," Jo complained. "Ugh. I hate sleeping in cars." She twisted around uncomfortably, attempting to crack her back.

"Clearly, I'm a specimen of what a woman should be," Charlie gloated as she carefully dug out a perfectly balanced bite of parfait for Eden and then stuck the spoon in her mouth.

"Yeah well, you're still a bottom," Jo mumbled.

"Yeah you are," Eden said distractedly, and then, seeming to register what she'd said, threw a hand up over her mouth, wide eyes looking over at her girlfriend. "Sorry," Eden said through her hand.

"I knew it!" Jo said triumphantly, popping the last bit of her breakfast burrito into her mouth with a flourish.

"Damnit, Eden!" Charlie yelled.

* * *

**Hour 8**

Soon after finishing her breakfast, Emily's tiredness had finally caught up with her. She slumped over onto Tuck's shoulder. Her forehead bumped gently against his cheek as the car jostled slightly on the uneven road.

"You need to shave," Emily mumbled as she drifted off. "Why don't hobbits have facial hair?"

* * *

**Hour 9**

Emily slept soundly, as did Tuck. They didn't even wake up when Charlie's hangover suddenly hit her, and Eden had to pull over so that Charlie could puke up all her McDonald's breakfast on the side of the road, Jo laughing mercilessly at her.

* * *

**Hour 10**

Emily was half-woken by Charlie and Eden arguing about something, but she wasn't fully awake, so it streamed into her consciousness in a jumble and made no sense to her at the time.

"How did you even do that?" Eden was asking in a fierce whisper.

"I don't know…"Charlie sounded slightly annoyed. "It's just…it's stuck."

There was dull thumping noise then.

"Well don't hit it!" Eden hissed. "That's not going to help anything. Try wiggling it."

A few moments of silence passed.

"The wiggling isn't helping, Edie."

"Then we'll just have to enjoy it, won't we?"

* * *

**Hour 11**

Emily woke up very slowly. She could hear her friends' voices around her, talking about the new curtain that some alumni had just donated to the theater department at Vallance for the main stage.

She could feel the sun, hot on her face, and Tuck's arm wrapped tightly around her shoulders.

There was a song playing in the background, and for some reason it seemed to be woven into Emily's subconscious, trapping her in sleep, almost. It was hypnotic. She felt like it had always been playing. For her entire life. This one song. It was a struggle to pull away from it. She had to force herself to open her eyes.

Finally, she moved. Her eyes cracked open and she sat up a little, straightening out her back, stretching her arms up above her head until they hit the roof of the car.

"What is that," Emily asked, her voice scratchy and her throat very dry.

"What's what, sweetie?" Tuck asked removing his arm from her now that she wasn't leaning into him anymore.

"That song…"Emily said, confused. "How long has that song been playing?"

Everyone in the car laughed at Emily's immediate observation.

"Well, apparently, while we were all sleeping," Jo began, "Charlotte somehow managed get this song stuck on repeat. So it's been playing for over an hour now."

"I just wanted to listen to the Bob Dylan CD I found in the glove box," Charlie defended herself, turning around so she could face Emily. "I don't know how it happened. I went to turn the volume up, and I knocked into a button or something. It just…did this!"

"So I hope you like  _Tangled Up in Blue,"_ Eden said, barely able to control her laughter, "because we'll be listening to it for the next 3 hours."

Emily shook her head and chuckled. "Why is it that things like this always happen to you, Charlotte?"

"I wish I knew," Charlie heaved forlornly.

Emily pulled her phone out of her pocket then and saw that she had a new text from Paige.

"Happy Birthday baby! Can we skype tonight? I don't know what your plans are, but I hope you have time. Either way, I'll call you around 3. Did my present get there all right? I sent it to the house, not your school mail box."

Emily smiled widely, excitement flooding through her body. She was going to be able to kiss Paige in just a few hours. And hopefully more. Emily felt her stomach knot pleasantly as she imagined herself pressed firmly against Paige's body. After a month apart, she knew that whatever happened between her and Paige, it was going to be good. She couldn't wait to get her hands on Paige, all over her. Emily gave an involuntary shudder as she let her mind wander to the last time she and Paige had been in bed together, the way Paige sounded when she'd come, how her nipple ring had felt in Emily's mouth.

"Is it my dear sister?" Tuck asked, noticing what Emily was looking at. He wasn't trying to be nosey, but they were in such close quarters, it was hard not to see.

Emily coughed, snapping back out of her dirty thoughts and blushing slightly. "Uh, yeah. She's going to call around 3. She said something about a present, though. Did you guys see anything in the mail for me the past couple days? She said she sent it to the house."

"Yes!" Eden answered promptly, her eyes never wavering from the road. "We intercepted the package and packed it."

"It's in my bag," Jo added.

"You guys are the best," Emily said as she composed a text back, telling Paige that she had the gift and that she'd open it later when Paige could watch. She didn't mention that she'd be watching from right beside her and not on Skype, though.

* * *

**Hour 12**

"The clouds?" Emily suggested.

"Nope," Charlie replied.

"The line, on the road, that divides the lanes," Jo said.

"No," Charlie said, smirking at Jo.

"Em's t-shirt," Tuck tried, noticing a thin line of white sticking up above the red plaid she was wearing.

"Wrong again," Charlie said.

Emily glanced all around the car, looking for something white that she could guess. They were playing I-Spy and Charlie was currently kicking their asses. It had been 20 minutes of guessing and they still didn't know what she had spied.

"The light covering?" Emily threw out, glancing up at the ceiling.

"Nope," Charlie answered. She was looking so smug and pleased with herself. It was infuriating everyone.

"Is it something in the car, or outside of the car?" Eden asked.

"Since you're all SUCKING so bad," Charlie relented, "I'll give you a hint. It is in the car. And it's in the front portion."

Jo, Tuck, and Emily all leaned forward so they could peer around the front seats and see if they could spot anything white.

"Oh! The rubber on your tennis shoes!" Tuck shouted, sure he had finally gotten it.

"Wrong again, losers!" Charlie replied, laughing.

"You're so annoying sometimes," Eden huffed at her girlfriend. "Emily, tickle her for me."

Emily jabbed her hands into Charlie's sides since she was seated directly behind her and tickled her relentlessly for a few seconds while Charlie screamed. She was close to tears when Emily finally stopped, and then she just curled over in the seat helplessly.

"I don't deserve this abuse," Charlie croaked.

"Just tell us what it was," Jo said, shoving Charlie in the arm.

"Fine," Charlie relented. "But I'm the I-Spy champion of the world." She leaned back up then and turned around to face them all. "It was my own eye ball!"

"What?" Eden said angrily. "You can't do that! You can't even  _see_ your own eye. That's the whole point of the game. It's got to be something you can SEE!"

"I can see it in the mirror," Charlie said, gesturing to the side view mirror outside her window.

"That's cheating!" Tuck bellowed.

"No it's not! You're all just sore losers," Charlie defended. "You're mad that I outsmarted you all."

"You know, we could just leave you," Emily said, leaning around the back of Charlie's seat. "On the side of the road. We outnumber you. "

Eden glanced over at Emily then, and a silent understanding passed between them.

"You'd never leave me," Charlie retorted. "You all love me too much. "

Emily leaned back into her own seat again and made eye contact with Jo and Tuck and they both grinned and nodded at her.

"You know what?" Eden said from the front seat, steering the car onto the shoulder of the road they were on. "I like that idea."

"What? Edie…what are you doing?" Charlie asked, worry very apparent in her voice as the car came to a stop. "Okay, ha ha. I get it. I'm a smug bastard. I'll stop."

"Nope, too late now," Jo said opening her door and climbing out. Emily got out, too and they went around to Charlie's door, flung it open and pulled her out by the arms while Charlie struggled.

"Guys, come on," Charlie pleaded, as the other two released her a few feet away and moved back toward the car. "Don't do this!"

Emily quickly hopped into the passenger seat and Jo returned to the back while Charlie tapped at the windows pathetically.

"Let me back in," Charlie begged. "It's cold!"

Eden rolled her window down slightly and yelled out, "We'll pick you up on our back!" Then she hit the gas and sped away, leaving Charlie on the side of the road while everyone in the car roared with laughter.

* * *

**Hour 13**

They'd gone back to get Charlie, of course, only driving a half a mile at most, before Eden turned the car around. But Charlie had been pouting in stony silence since she'd climbed huffily into the backseat again.

"You're all evil bitches," she'd mumbled, and she hadn't said a thing to any of them since.

When they'd passed into Pennsylvania about an hour ago, Tuck had taken over driving. Finally being in the same state as Philly though, was very encouraging. Everyone had reached that point where they couldn't properly remember a time when they weren't in this car. They were all going a little stir crazy.

Eden, Charlie, and Emily were in the backseat, now. Eden was painting her nails in a rainbow pattern. Charlie was reading a sports magazine and refusing to speak to anyone. Emily had been fielding calls from her family and friends wishing her a happy birthday all afternoon. She returned to reading her Dylan Thomas book in the last half hour, though, so she was caught off guard when her phone started ringing.

"Oh shit, it's Paige," Emily said glancing at her phone screen. She had meant to think of some kind of cover story before her girlfriend called. "Everybody be cool!" she shouted as she answered, Charlie giving her an exasperated look and then returning to her ESPN magazine.

"Hey!" Emily said, a little too cheerily.

"Hey babe," Paige replied, chuckling at her. "Happy Birthday! How's your day going?"

"Oh my god!" Emily said, panicking slightly as her mind wheeled around. She was horrible at lying. Always had been. "It's sooooo good. I'm having a great day."

"Are you drunk already?" Paige asked, noticing how strange Emily was acting.

 _That's plausible, go with that_ , Emily thought,  _it is my 21_ _st_ _birthday._

"Yeah I'm drunk!" Emily answered, glancing over at Charlie, who was red in the face from holding back her laughter.

"Are you alone?" Paige questioned, she didn't want Emily to just be drinking alone on her birthday. "It's so quiet on your end."

Emily put her hand over the mouthpiece on her phone and whispered. "Make some noise, talk or something! Turn the music back up!"

They all started babbling incoherently and Tuck cranked the music up. "How about that football?" Charlie said next to her.

"Oh no, I'm not alone," Emily said to Paige. "Everybody's here."

"What are you guys doing? I know you were excited to see what the girls had planned for you," Paige asked.

"We're at a strip club!" Emily announced, saying the first thing that came into her mind.

"We're at a what?!" Eden shouted, dropping her nail polish.

The year prior, Emily had participated in a psychology experiment at Solomon's only strip club. The experience had been incredibly uncomfortable. She didn't disagree with strip clubs inherently, but she had never been to one before. As soon as she walked in the doors, she realized that there was probably a huge difference between a strip club in a larger town and the establishment she found herself in presently. It had been a seedy, creepy little place, full of older white men, most of who were sitting by themselves, in complete silence, while they watched one woman dancing on a pole to classic rock at the back of the building where the stage had been set up. For some reason, this place had popped into her mind when Paige asked what they were doing. Going to a strip club definitely seemed like a 21st birthday kind of activity.

"Oh really?" Paige asked, surprised to hear this. "It's only 3:30…is Tuck with you?"

"Yep, yeah, we're all here," Emily said quickly.

"Tuck is with you at a female strip club?" Paige asked again, starting to feel a little suspicious.

"He doesn't like it," Emily blurted out, heart racing as her mistake registered with her. "He just came along because it's my birthday. It's kind of creepy, though, here. So we'll probably leave soon."

"Is that  _Tangled Up in Blue?_ Why are they playing that in a strip club?" Paige said, recognizing the song.

"Yeah, I don't know. It's been playing on repeat since we got here," Emily rattled off. "I told you, this place is just weird."

"Are you really at a strip club, Em? You sound kinda…off," Paige asked, beginning to feel legitimately worried now.

"Everything's fine, baby," Emily said, feeling bad for worrying Paige. Why couldn't she just play it cool? "Look, we'll Skype later tonight, okay? Around 9, yeah?"

"Alright, that sounds good," Paige acquiesced. Maybe Emily was just really uncomfortable at the strip club, she thought. "Don't open my present until then. I want to see your face when you open it. I love you."

"I love you, too," Emily said, breathing out a sigh of relief. "I can't wait to see your face."

* * *

**Hour 14**

"Fuuuuuuck," Charlie had resumed talking again and using it to voice her displeasure. "Are we almost there?"

"Yes, we'll be there in like half an hour, Charlie," Tuck informed her from the driver's seat. "God, you're like a child."

"Hey, don't call her a child!" Eden snapped at him.

"Did you even drive at all?" Jo asked Charlie and then immediately answered for her. "No, you didn't."

"If I had, we would already be there," Charlie scoffed.

"Yeah, we'd be there," Emily agreed, "but you'd also have a $200 speeding ticket, probably."

"Will somebody turn that fucking song off?!" Jo yelled.

They all needed out of the car, badly.

* * *

Paige couldn't help but wonder what the hell was going on with Emily. She had been acting so strangely on the phone. Maybe she was mad that Paige couldn't be there for her birthday? Maybe she was just drunk? Or maybe she was turned on at the strip club and felt awkward when she'd called? Whatever it was, she hoped it was gone by the time they Skyped together that evening. Paige was missing Emily's physical presence horribly. It was calming and electric all at once. Paige had entertained the notion of taking a quick trip to Vallance just so she could be with Emily for a couple days, but her grandma was being released on from the hospital that Sunday night. The timing just wasn't right. But part of Emily's birthday present was that Paige had formally invited her to spend the week between Christmas and New Year with her in Philadelphia. She'd even gone to a local craft store and bought special paper and stickers to make a little invitation for her. It looked like an elementary school art project when she was finished, but she was hoping Emily would find it endearing rather than pathetic. Paige was setting all her hopes on Emily saying yes to coming to visit her. Paige  _needed_ to touch her again. The world just seemed all wonky the longer they were apart.

It was around 4:30, now, and Paige was still at the hospital. She had wandered out to the nurses station when the doctor had come by to check on how Hazel's leg was healing. Adrienne was working, so Paige wandered over to talk to her. They hadn't hung out since going to the book signing together, but they did usually chat when they ran into each other at the hospital. Paige was getting the feeling that Adrienne was coming to view her in a little-sister sort of light, which was fine with her. They never really spoke about personal things. It was more just lesbian and queer culture types of discussions. Adrienne suggested movies and shows for Paige to watch, and music that she might like. Sometimes she even brought something along for Paige to borrow.

"Hey," Paige said, approaching the counter of the nurses' station.

"Paige," Adrienne said, acknowledging her presence, though she was currently staring intently at a patient's chart. After a few moments she scribbled something down, then closed it and set it aside.

"Ms. McCullers," Adrienne said, walking over to her, "what can I do for you?"

"Very funny," Paige stated. "I do have a question, though."

"What's up?" Adrienne responded, dropping her professional manner completely.

"Well, I've nearly finished season 1, you know, of The L Word, and I was just wondering if you had season 2, or if I should ask my parents for their Netflix password?"

Adrienne chuckled at this. "Really, you can't spare $8 a month? Fucking cheapskate."

Paige could tell she was teasing her, though. "Do you have it or not?"

"Is this all I am to you? Some kind of gay library where you can go to check out educational materials?"

"We're friends…hospital friends. Gay, hospital buddies."

"Yeah, yeah," Adrienne said, narrowing her eyes at Paige.

Paige always got the feeling that Adrienne didn't quite know what to make of her when Adrienne looked at her like that. Her attention was drawn away from Paige quickly, though. She looked a little taken aback, but impressed at the same time as she stared at something at the end of the hallway. "I think some kind of Queer Mafia just walked in here."

Paige laughed, turned to look at what she was talking about, and then her jaw dropped in disbelief.

To be fair, they did stick out, and each of them looked a little mean and grumpy from spending the last 14 hours in the car. They were definitely putting out a  _Westside Story_  vibe. Tuck was wearing extremely skinny jeans, an oversized sweater, and loafers. He was rocking a five o'clock shadow, too. Eden was in a grey Les Mis shirt, slacks, saddle shoes, and a loose cardigan. But then she had those rainbow colored fingernails. Charlie had on jeans and an old Chicago Bulls jersey underneath her Vallance basketball jacket. Her hair, as always, looked like she'd just been thoroughly fucked. Jo had on combat boots, black jeans, a grey t-shirt and her dad's old Army jacket. Emily was in blue jeans, a red plaid shirt, and her leather jacket.

Paige took them in; strolling in like they were about to start a turf war. Utter shock was evident on her face. And then Emily saw her, and the biggest smile broke over her face. Paige pushed herself off the counter she'd been leaning on as Emily ran up and jumped into her arms, wrapping her legs around her girlfriend's waist. Before Paige even really knew what was happening, Emily was kissing her, her warm lips sliding fervently against hers, Emily's tongue pushing into her willing mouth, Emily's hands tangled in her hair. And nothing else really mattered. Paige would have been happy to stay just like that forever. Dazed and surprised and in love. Right in the middle of the geriatric ward.


	42. A Little Less Conversation

The last half hour was mostly a blur for Paige. She felt like she was in a complete haze of shock, happiness, and now, horniness. There had been quick hellos all around at the hospital. She had hugged the girls and her brother and she was pretty sure she vaguely introduced them all to Adrienne, but honestly, she could have imagined that. Paige couldn't take her eyes off of Emily. It was like she was discovering her eyes for the first time, or understanding what they were for, maybe. She thought of that overused anecdote people told about getting glasses for the first time and realizing that trees had individual leaves on them.

As cheesy as it sounded, that's what it felt like. Everything had been such a blur in her life lately that she hadn't realized all the details she was missing. And then Emily had jumped into her arms and there were leaves on the trees again. People weren't blocks of color moving around her periphery, they were rich, detailed, vivid. Cars were more than hunks of metal shuttling bodies to and fro. Even the hospital seemed bursting with things she'd never noticed before. There was a beautiful painting of some sunflowers just outside the elevators that Paige was sure she had never even glanced at until Emily was standing next to her, gripping her hand tightly.

The two of them had left— just the two of them— after arranging to meet the others at a bar downtown at 8 o'clock that night. They had practically run out of the hospital and out to the car, keeping a hold of each other's hand the entire time. On the drive home, Emily kept having to remind Paige to keep her eyes on the road instead of her; both of them grinning like idiots. They'd barely made it through the garage and into the back door before Emily was on her again, pushing her so firmly against the side of the refrigerator that all the magnets had come cascading down to the ground and a loaf of bread had fallen off the top and hit Paige in the head.

And that's where they were now, Emily half collapsed onto Paige chest, her arms wrapped loosely around her neck, as they laughed.

"You've literally been in my house for five seconds and you've already made a mess!" Paige chuckled, rubbing her hands up and down Emily's back underneath her jacket as Emily lifted her head back up again to look at her.

She kissed a line along Paige's jaw up to her ear, still giggling, and said, "I'm sorry, should we clean them up?"

Paige's eye fluttered closed and she sighed contentedly as Emily continued on her journey with her lips, moving slowly down her neck.

In the time they'd been apart, both of them had become very good at reading each other, just from the tone of voice the other took, or the small noises that often go unnoticed when two people are face to face, but are hard to ignore on the phone. Being in a long distance relationship and talking to your significant other on the phone for at least an hour a day did have some advantages, it seemed. They were now thoroughly skilled at listening.

"Tell me," Emily said, wanting to know what was going on in Paige's mind behind the happy sigh she'd just exuded.

"I was just thinking," Paige told her, kissing her lightly on the forehead, "how happy I am that we can laugh together. I mean, we can go from wanting to rip each other's clothes off to laughing and it's all just as good. Being with you, no matter what we're doing, it always feels so right."

Emily stood up fully and took a step back from Paige, smiling widely. "I love that, too. I've never had this with someone before. I didn't realize love could be so… happy." Emily shrugged her shoulders, a sense of weightlessness overtaking her body as she stared at Paige.

All Paige could do was stare at Emily's beautiful face and smile back at her. "I can't believe you're here. In my kitchen. I can't believe you came all this way."

"I would have gone a lot farther, if I had to," Emily said, grabbing both of Paige's hands in her own. "So, you gonna show me around or what?"

"Oh, yeah," Paige answered, looking around her. "Well, this is the kitchen."

"I've noticed."

"And this is where we keep the bread," Paige said, pointing at the loaf that was on the floor by their feet.

"Very funny," Emily said, shoving Paige playfully and then stepping back into the other girl's personal space. She grabbed a fistful of Paige's hair, at the nape of her neck, and pulled her in for a deep kiss. There was nothing sweet about the way Emily was kissing her now; she slipped one of her thighs in between Paige's legs and ground against her center as their tongues slid together. Paige's hand quickly moved down to Emily's ass and pulled her flush against her body, her hands squeezing roughly as she did so. Paige let out a long groan as Emily's ground her hips into her once again and drug her tongue along the roof of the other girl's mouth, but then she pulled away with a smirk on her face.

"Give me a tour," Emily said, leaving Paige by the fridge and walking around the corner into the breakfast room.

"You are such a tease," Paige huffed as she followed quickly behind her.

Emily looked over her shoulder seductively before coming to a stop in the next room and turning around to face Paige again. When Paige had caught up, Emily grabbed her by the waist of her pants and pulled her closer, staring directly into Paige's eyes.

"Believe me," Emily husked, "We will be fucking. And soon."

Paige gulped and leaned in to kiss Emily, but the other girl spoke again before she could. "If you want to, I mean. If you're ready."

"I want to," Paige responded simply, leaning back so she could look Emily in the eye. She couldn't help but feel utterly confident when was Emily licking her lips like that and staring at her hungrily.

* * *

The tour of the house didn't take too long. Paige showed Emily the downstairs bedroom where Hazel would be staying when she came home; the TV room, which housed the 10 lb fish her grandfather had caught the year before he died; the downstairs bathroom, which Paige rarely used; and the combined living room and dining room which housed a fireplace and grandfather clock in the corner by the front door. The only place left to show Emily was her bedroom.

"So, just upstairs now?" Emily asked, unaware that the only thing on the upper level was the one big bedroom that now belonged to Paige.

"Yep," Paige answered. "Before we go up, though, I'm going to turn the heater up."

Paige wandered back into the hall where the thermostat was fixed to the wall, and fiddled with the dial for a moment. No matter what, the old house always seemed a bit chilly to her, and if Emily, Tuck, and the girls were staying there for the weekend, she didn't want them to be cold. Paige was so distracted by this thought, she didn't realize that Emily had followed her into the hall until she felt her lips pressing open-mouthed kisses on her neck and shoulders. The contact made Paige shudder. She could feel it somehow; the mood between them had deepened even further. These kisses were definitely going somewhere.

Emily's hands found their way under Paige's shirt and she began stroking up and down her stomach in broad strokes just above the waist of her pants. She moved in as close as she could, her front settling flush against Paige's back as she moved Paige's hair to one side and started to suck on the her earlobe.

"You feel like a dream," Emily mumbled, her hands moving up to cup Paige's breasts through her bra, her mouth moving back down to suck insistently on Paige's neck.

"I…used to…dream about you," Paige was able to get out through the small gasps that Emily's ministrations were causing.

"Used to?" Emily purred curiously, biting Paige firmly on the shoulder just as her hands moved down to grab the hem of Paige's shirt, and then quickly pull it over her head and throw it aside. Emily let her fingertips trace tantalizingly along her girlfriend's side for a few moments as she waited to her to answer.

"Before we were together, last summer….four or five times," Paige said, having trouble focusing as Emily unhooked her bra and slid it down her arms. "They were the same, all…all of them."

Paige moaned loudly as Emily took her bare breasts in her hands and licked a trail up her spine behind her.

"Oh fuck, Em," Paige rasped out, pushing back into Emily. Both of her hands were propped up against the wall in an attempt to steady herself, but it was becoming increasingly hard to do. She could feel how wet she was, already starting to soak through underwear. She wanted Emily to touch her so badly. She was aching for it.

"You should tell me about that dream," Emily said in a low voice, pulling on Paige's nipple, the one with the piercing, and hearing a sharp hiss from the girl as she did so.

"We were outside the frat house," Paige began shakily but quickly. Emily grabbed her by the hips and turned her around so they were face to face. She couldn't wait any longer, she needed to have Paige, some part of Paige, in her mouth.

"Keep going," Emily encouraged her girl as she stared hungrily at her chest and then took one of Paige's nipples into her mouth. Paige's hands moved to the back of her head and tangled in her hair, pulling her in, though Emily didn't seem to need any encouragement. With a long moan, Paige's head fell back against the wall as Emily sucked and rolled the sensitive nub around with her tongue before moving across her chest to take the other in her mouth.

When she released her nipple with a slight pop, Emily moved back from Paige until they weren't touching at all. She simply looked her up and down for a moment and finally, spoke.

"Were we kissing, in the dream?" Emily asked. "You let me?"

Paige was breathing heavily, still leaning back on the wall by the thermostat. She wanted more than anything to just grab Emily and pull her hot mouth back against her tits, but she also knew what Emily was doing, what she wanted. Her girlfriend loved words and especially loved hearing Paige talk to her about anything sexual. She'd gotten Emily off a few times on the phone that way in the past couple of weeks. And she knew if she could pull herself together long enough to tell Emily about this dream that it would only make what was about to happen between them even better, so she shook herself mentally and began to speak, rubbing her breasts and twisting her nipples as she did so.

"Yeah, I let you kiss me in the dream. I wanted you to kiss me that night after we danced together. God, I was so wet, Em," Paige admitted, "just from dancing with you that night. You felt so good, rubbing your ass against me. But, you know, I kind of freaked a little. But in the dream...mmm, in the dream, I let myself want you and you had me pressed against that wall outside the house, with your tongue in my mouth and your hands all over my body. It was rough. You were groping me. Rubbing my tits through my shirt. I loved it."

As Paige spoke, Emily pulled her own shirt off and then unhooked her bra and tossed it aside. She stepped back into Paige and let her hands roam all over the girl's upper half, pressing her firmly into the wall behind her, hands squeezing greedily at whatever they came across.

"Like this?" Emily asked, her eyes dark and lustful as she looked Paige dead in the eye.

"Mmmhmm," Paige confirmed, biting her bottom lip as Emily shamelessly felt her up. "And then you'd open my pants…."

Emily's hands followed along with the dream Paige was recounting, sliding between their bodies, her nails raking lightly down Paige's abdomen as she went, and popping the button of her jeans open before sliding the zipper down. Paige couldn't take her eyes off of Emily's hands, her heart hammering madly in her chest.

"….and then you'd touch…me," Paige stuttered out. "You'd touch me, Emily….Emily, please touch me."

The last words were barely a whisper, but Emily heard her. She'd been waiting, to make sure that Paige was ready, to hear her ask. It turned her on to no end to hear the pleading, desperate tone in Paige's voice. So at her request, Emily slid her hand in to her underwear, past the short, coarse hair that covered Paige's mound, and down into her slick, hot folds.

Paige's mouth opened in a silent gasp as Emily touched her for the first time and stroked through her wetness. She reached her hand out and wrapped it around Emily's neck and pulled her in closer. She didn't want any space between them, not when Emily was touching her like this, in a way no one else ever had, like she was something that should be worshipped.

"God…you feel so…incredible," Emily murmured in awe, the bravado of a few moments before gone now that she was truly feeling her girlfriend for the first time. She gathered up some of Paige's wetness on her fingers and pulled her hand back out. Emily spread some of Paige's arousal onto the nipple of the woman in front of her and immediately leaned in and took it into her mouth, sucking every bit off as Paige whimpered.

When Emily had repeated this action several times to both of her breast, and Paige was beginning to pant with want she pushed away from the wall. "Upstairs," was all Paige said, as she grabbed the hand that had been in between her legs moments before and pulled Emily towards the stairs with her.

* * *

Words weren't necessary after that. Once they were upstairs, Paige shut the bedroom door behind her and pulled her pants and underwear off before turning to Emily, who had moved to stand by the bed, and began to rid her of the rest of her clothes as well.

For a moment, the two just took in each other's bodies, Paige letting out a slight groan as her eyes raked ravenously up and down her girlfriend before she pushed Emily back on to the bed and climbed on top of her. Their legs fell between each other, thighs settling against the other's center. Paige was the first to move. She leaned in and pressed her lips against Emily as she ground herself down onto the other girl's thigh, feeling Emily's arousal spreading across her own as she did so. Emily's hands quickly moved down from Paige's shoulders to her hips so she could pull Paige's body more firmly against her.

The only sound in the room was that of their bodies sliding together, skin on skin, and the breathy pants that Emily was emitting underneath her. It was the most amazing thing Paige had ever felt. Their bodies moving against each other were so soft and slick. She had no idea simple friction could feel this delicious. She let her head fall against Emily's shoulder as they rocked together. Her last thought, before Emily moved her hand back in between her legs was that even this simple action felt a million times more erotic and satisfying than anything she'd ever done with a boy. Then Emily shifted slightly, lifted her hips, and slid two fingers inside of Paige's dripping pussy.

She was so tight around Emily's fingers, so wet and ready for her. It was intoxicating. Emily felt like she could get drunk on the feeling of Paige shuddering on top of her as she began to stroke in and out of her, pressing against her walls, going deeper with each thrust of her arm. Paige was wrapped so tightly around her, they were so entwined that they almost seemed like one person, Paige's hips settling into a rhythm, Emily following along with her, working her closer and closer to the edge. Emily's palm was rubbing perfectly against her clit, and Paige could feel her stomach tightening as she pressed firmly inside of her, her walls contracting around her fingers. She was so close.

Emily could feel it, Paige was falling apart around her, pounding her hips down against the hand she had wedged between Paige and her own thigh with increasing abandon. She pulled her girlfriend's ear over to her mouth as she continued to fuck her and whispered, "Baby, cum for me," and then let her tongue trail around its edge.

Almost as if she was waiting for it, the words seemed to be a catalyst. Paige's back arched, her hips stilling, as she came around Emily's fingers, muttering incoherently and moaning as she rode out her orgasm.

Emily could still feel her walls fluttering faintly as her body slowly relaxed and Paige let out uneven breaths as her heart slowed back down. When even the fluttering had faded out, Emily rolled them both onto their sides and pulled out of Paige, who gasped at the sudden loss.

"I wish you could be inside me all the time," Paige muttered with a thoroughly sated grin on her face.

Emily licked her fingers clean before smiling back at her and responding.

"That would probably be awkward when we went out in public. And my fingers would get all pruney."

Paige laughed lightly and leaned in for a long, languid kiss, sliding her tongue into Emily's mouth and recognizing the faint flavor of her own arousal there. She was enjoying herself immensely, kissing Emily and thinking about what she wanted to do to her, when a thought struck her, and she pulled back abruptly.

"Em!" Paige huffed, a slight annoyance evident in her tone.

"What?"

"It's your birthday!" Paige said, stating the obvious.

"So?"

"So! You…I should have done you first!"

Emily laughed at Paige's indignant expression, her nose wrinkling adorably.

"Don't laugh! I'm a horrible girlfriend. I'm supposed to be giving you…stuff on your birthday."

"You are anything but a horrible girlfriend, Paige Darlene," Emily said, grinning when the nickname got a chuckle out of the woman next to her. "And that was  _totally_  a present for me—getting to see you and touch you like that."

Paige felt flushed hearing Emily talk about her that way. It was exhilarating to know that fucking her turned Emily on so much. But she still felt a little bad. "I still think you should've gone first."

"Well, if it bothers you that much, why don't you do something about it?" Emily challenged, her eyes burning with desire.

Paige didn't need to be told twice. She leaned in and began kissing Emily again, letting her hand trail up her body until she was massaging her breasts, rolling Emily's nipples between her fingers before she leaned her head down to take one into her mouth. Emily rolled onto her back while Paige remained propped on her side next to her, working her breasts over with her mouth and hands, and then slowly kissing her way down her stomach. As she got to the area below her belly button and started to nip at the skin there, Emily's hips bucked up involuntarily.

"Tell me what you want for your birthday, Em," Paige drawled, pulling her lips away from the Emily's stomach for a moment. "Tell me how you want it."

She dropped back down and dipped her tongue into Emily's belly button, loving the sounds that were coming out of her girlfriend's mouth, desperate and breathy, as her hips continue to buck up. Paige could smell how turned on she was already, and the black curls between Emily's legs were begging to be touched. Being this close to Emily's cunt was making Paige's mouth water. She wanted to taste so badly, but she also wanted to give Emily what she wanted, especially on her birthday.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, Paige knew that she should be worried about whatever was going to happen next. It was, after all, her first time having sex with a woman. But it was Emily. And Paige couldn't bring herself to feel anything other than turned on and eager.

"I want…ohhhh, Paige," Emily was attempting to tell Paige how exactly she wanted to be fucked, but with Paige dragging her tongue ever lower and sucking on the skin just inside her hips, it was difficult to focus. "I want you…to eat me…out. Please," Emily begged, her hand latching onto the top of Paige's head as she attempted to push her girlfriend down where she needed her.

Paige moved herself in between her legs and was met with the beautiful sight of Emily, spread open, wet, and waiting for her. Her brown skin was glistening with arousal and the heady smell of it was making Paige lightheaded with lust. She must have been staring for longer than she realized because Emily's voice suddenly drifted up to her, catching her attention.

"Paige…" was all Emily said before biting her bottom lip, but the look in her eyes as she stared down at the woman between her legs was so open and needy that she didn't have to say anything else.

"You're so fucking sexy," Paige mumbled as she lowered her head and took a long broad swipe, her tongue up moving up through the folds of Emily's vagina and just barely brushing against her throbbing clit.

"Ohh," Emily moaned as she pushed forward into Paige's face, one hand grasping Paige's hair.

For the first few licks, Paige just tasted, savoring the combination of sweet tanginess that was uniquely Emily. She ran her tongue through Emily's folds a few times and then wrapped her hands around the other girl's hips, angling her back slightly, and slipped her tongue as far as she could into Emily's entrance as she could. She moaned in pleasure as she felt Emily's walls tighten around her tongue. Emily's hand squeezed around the strands of Paige's hair as she canted up, fucking herself on her girlfriend's tongue.

Paige worked inside of her for a few minutes before she pulled out and moved up to focus on Emily's clit. She ran her tongue slowly around the sensitive bundle of nerves before she pressed firmly against it and then began to alternate between lapping at it gently and sucking it into her mouth. Emily's thighs were beginning to shake as she flicked her tongue over the nub more and more quickly.

"Fuck me, baby," Emily moaned out. "I want your fingers…inside me."

Paige pulled back from her quivering mess of a girlfriend just long enough to slide two of her fingers inside her. Mimicking the movement she used on herself when she masturbated, Paige began slowly stroking as deep inside of her girlfriend's pussy as she could reach. Emily seemed to enjoy it, following along with the rhythm she set, so Paige leaned back in to continue her assault on her clit.

It wasn't long before Paige had to use her free arm to hold Emily's hips down because she was thrusting so forcefully up into her face.

"Harder," Emily begged, glancing down at Paige moving between her legs, the sight sending a hot gush of wetness around her girlfriend's fingers. She looked so sexy and disheveled with her mouth latched against Emily's center. "Fuck me harder."

Paige responded, pounding even more forcefully inside of Emily's drenched sex, earning a sweet string of expletives from her girlfriend for her effort. After that, it only took a few more curls of her fingers and flicks of her tongue before Emily's walls clenched around her and her thighs clamped around Paige's head.

Paige looked up as Emily came hard, her head thrown back, back arched. There was a long, loud moan pouring out of her and her hands, having abandoned Paige's head at some point, were balled up at her sides, fiercely fisting into the blanket underneath them. It was the single most beautiful thing Paige had ever seen and she knew then, as Emily's body began to gradually relax beneath her, that she would never experience it enough times. She would always want more of Emily.


	43. The Salt Lick

It had started flurrying on their way to the bus stop, Emily pulling Paige along in her wake, even though Paige was the one who knew where they were headed. Assuming that they'd both be getting drunk, Paige had begrudgingly suggested they take the bus to meet the others.

It had been a miracle that Emily had even managed to get Paige out of bed after that third orgasm, only being able to manage it by reminding her that it was Emily's birthday, after all, and she wanted to go drink with her friends. She really thought Paige was going to just turn around when the light snowflakes began to dust the sidewalk around them.

"Ohhhhh, jesus, now it's snowing?" Paige grumbled, stopping for a moment to stare angrily up into the dark sky. "We could be naked, Emily! Right now. All warm and cozy. Eating cookies and watching The L Word."

"As wonderful as that sounds," Emily spoke in an amused tone, "it would be really rude of us to stand everyone up. Next time I'll know that we need to allow for naptime after sextime. Especially when multiple orgasms are involved."

Emily smirked over her shoulder at Paige, whose teeth had just started chattering.

"You must be some kind of super human if you don't need a nap after that," Paige responded.

"You just need a little food," Emily said. "We'll grab something at the bar, okay?"

As grumpy as Paige was, Emily couldn't help but find post-sex Paige utterly adorable with her cheeks all rosy from the cold and her shoulders hunched up as she shivered and hurried them down the sidewalk and then across the quiet, suburban street to the bus stop.

"Here," Paige said, digging her phone from her pocket as they huddled together in the small shelter to wait, "let me check when the bus will be here."

The light from the screen illuminated her pale face and the white dusting that had settled on her hair and shoulders. Emily couldn't help but stare, reaching her hand up to run her fingers through Paige's auburn locks.

"You've got snow in your hair," Emily whispered.

Paige looked up from her phone, their faces only a few inches apart, and was met with Emily's intense, loving stare piercing into her. It was silly, but she felt a great deal warmer all of a sudden and she also didn't mind that they were out here on a dark sidewalk instead of cuddled up together in bed. The light from the cell phone blinked off and the semi-darkness of the sleepy neighborhood seemed to float down and settle as gently as a sheet around them.

"You think I'm pretty," Paige whispered, seeming to read Emily's thoughts.

"That's the understatement of the year," Emily told her, leaning in and giving Paige the lightest and most delicate kiss she could manage. Something about snow always made things seem so fragile to Emily, like any sudden movement or a voice raised too loud might shatter the whole world.

"When I was 10," she revealed quietly to Paige, whose surly attitude had melted away when Emily kissed her, "we came to visit my grandparents here in Philadelphia for my birthday. And there was this  _huge_  snowstorm. Do you remember it?"

"Hmm, I think so? Tuck and I always spent snow days watching Star Wars and having one-on-one snowball fights, so they all kind of blur together," Paige replied, smiling.

"Well this was a bad one," Emily went on. "We got in sometime in the afternoon, I think, the day before my birthday, and it started snowing right after dinner. The flakes were so big they looked like those fluffy balls that float down off the Cottonwoods in the spring."

Paige listened intently; sure that no one in the world could paint a picture quite like Emily Fields.

"I watched all night, my nose pressed against the window in the living room, until my mom made me go to bed. But it kept snowing, all through the night. It was still coming down when I woke up the next day. My dad wanted to shovel the driveway, you know, but I remember my grandpa telling him that there was no use until the snow had stopped. So he came outside with me instead and we went sledding on the hill in the park until lunch and then built a snowman with my mom. They both went inside when it started to get dark, to help with dinner, but I stayed out.

"God, Paige, it was like a completely different world, you know? There must have been 3 feet by then and when the street lamps came on you could see the snow still swirling around in the shafts of light. It was like living in a snow globe. The plows had come through to clear the streets earlier in the day, but it had just kept snowing. The whole city was deserted, everyone tucked away in their houses. My grandparents, they lived on a pretty busy street, but there were no cars that night. None at all. I knew my parents would be mad at me, but I snuck out of the yard and went out into the street and just stood there, right in the middle of the street. Everything was so hushed and still. It was surreal. I didn't want to move. I felt frozen by the stillness. And then while I was looking up and down the street, there was this bang, like a gunshot, and a snapping noise, and all the lights went out in the neighborhood.

"Luckily dinner was already cooked when the power went out. But we ate the pizza I had asked for by candlelight, and then my birthday cake. And my grandpa told us all stories about the snowstorms when he was a kid in Montana. It was always my favorite birthday, until today. "

Paige shook her head in disbelief, not sure how she could have ever found another person to be beautiful before she'd met Emily. No one compared to the girl in front of her. She wrapped her arms more tightly around Emily's body and moved in, brushing their noses together briefly before she began to kiss her. They stayed like that, lips moving softly together in the cold silence, until the bus finally came and pulled them from their blissful bubble.

* * *

Tuck had suggested the bar, a place called The Salt Lick, a mile or two outside of downtown. Being the more adventurous of the twins, he'd managed to experience a bit more of Philadelphia's nightlife than Paige before they'd both gone off to college. Paige was busy texting her brother as she and Emily approached, only needing to walk a few blocks after getting off of the bus before the place came into view.

"They're already here," Paige shared, stuffing her phone back into her pocket as Emily slipped her hand back into her grasp.

The bar looked pretty nondescript from the outside, though there was a telltale rainbow flag decal stuck in the corner of one of the windows. Music could be heard as the two walked up to the door, but it wasn't thumping or overwhelming the way it would have been at a club.

"He said they have a table toward the back," Paige informed Emily, pulling the door open for her and stepping gratefully into the warmth of the friendly pub.

Before they'd taken two steps however, a bald man stopped them and carded them, eying each of them shrewdly as he glanced between their faces and IDs until he was satisfied. Emily nodded at him when he'd finished, tugging Paige along with her, and the two moved through the thin crowd that populated the establishment.

It took Emily a few minutes to spot Tuck, but she eventually located him, sitting by himself at the moment, on a stool at a tall table. He pretended to check Emily out as they made their way around the last few tables to get to him and Emily laughed as he made a kissy face at her.

"Why are you all alone?" Paige said as a greeting, climbing on to the stool next to him. "Where is everyone?"

Emily scooted the stool next to Paige as close to her girlfriend as possible and joined in the conversation, practically sitting in Paige's lap when she had settled herself.

"Well apparently, Eden and Charlie aren't even 21," Tuck explained and noticed the incredulous look on Paige's face. "I know, right? Like, Eden, sure, okay. But Charlie could be a bartender! How did she manage that when she can't even buy alcohol legally?"

"Oh, please," Emily huffed. "Charlotte can talk  _anyone_ into  _anything._  During our freshman year, anytime we wanted to drink, Charlie would go make some mysterious phone call and fifteen minutes later some upperclassmen would show up with a couple of bottles of something for us. And I swear to god, it was never the same person twice. She's like…politician charming, you know? It's kind of scary."

"She's my idol," Tuck chuckled. "Anyway, she surprised Eden with tickets to go see some play. I think Eden said it was the three year anniversary of the first time their hands accidently brushed or something ridiculous like that. I mean really, they're worse than you two. They left around 5:30 from the hospital."

"Shut up," Paige said, not missing the dig at she and Emily's coupledom. She shoved Tuck in the shoulder and nearly knocked him off his stool before Emily ran a soothing hand over thigh under the table and kissed her on the cheek. Paige lowered her defenses under Emily's ministrations and then asked, "So where's Jo then?"

"She and Adrienne went to get us all drinks," Tuck answered.

Paige's eyes nearly bugged out of her head at this news.

"What? Why is Adrienne here?" she hissed at Tuck, staring daggers at him.

Tuck was immediately on the defensive as he answered. "Well when you two ran off to play Find the Vagina, she was nice enough to show us around the ward and then when her shift ended and Eden and Charlie left for the play, she stuck around and kept Jo company so I could spend some time alone with Grandma. She's been really  _nice_. Why are you upset? I thought you were friends with her?"

It was true; Paige did consider Adrienne a friend. But she was also pretty sure that Adrienne wouldn't mind being more than friends, and the prospect of having her and Emily in the same room for an extended period of time made her stomach churn uncomfortably.

"I am, but…"Paige started, but faded out when Emily's eyes met her own with an expectant look.

"But  _what_ , Paige?" Emily prodded, her proverbial hackles rising at the slightly guilty expression on her girlfriend's face.

Tuck looked between the two of them, his eyes narrowed. He was catching up pretty quickly just from the challenging look Emily was shooting Paige.

"Everywhere I go," he mused, "I'm surrounded by lesbians. Adrienne's gay?"

"Yeah," Paige mumbled. "I'm pretty sure she's attracted to me." She hoped that saying it in the most clinical way she could think of would make it obvious that she didn't feel the same about Adrienne.

"When did you get all this game?" Tuck asked rhetorically about his twin, leaning his head back and heaving a deep sigh just as Jo and Adrienne walked up, their arms full of beer for everyone.

"Hey guys!" Jo greeted them cheerfully, handing them each a bottle. She looked much happier than she had just a few hours ago.

Emily noticed the drastic change in her friend. It wasn't like Jo was never happy, of course she was, but she wasn't an exuberant person, and right now, Jo seemed almost giddy. Emily stared at her, eyes narrowed, her curiosity piqued. They locked eyes for a moment, a sort of acknowledgement passing between them, Emily clearly, albeit silently asking what was going on with Jo. Jo answered with a mischievous grin, but didn't give much else away.

"You," Jo said, pointing her bottle at Emily, "are not buying anything tonight. Got it, birthday girl?"

"Yeah, okay," Emily smiled, itching with such curiosity over this light mood her friend was in that she had completely forgotten the potentially threatening presence of Adrienne for a moment.

"So, Em, this is Adrienne," Jo went on, reminding Emily of the other woman. "I don't think you guys really met before you and Paige ran off to fuck."

Emily outright choked on the swig of beer she had just taken. Paige had to thump her on the back a few times while she coughed before she had recovered. Even as her breathing returned to normal, Emily's eyes remained wide in surprise at the thoroughly out of character comment Jo had just uttered. She had delivered it with the bluntness that Emily expected from Charlie, even Eden sometimes, but Jo? She was had a much more subtle conversationalist, especially out in public. Something was definitely up.

"Are you drunk?" Emily asked Jo outright.

"Not yet," Jo smirked, her eyes challenging Emily to guess again. "This is my first drink."

They stared at each other again, Jo's eyes glinting mischievously. Everyone else was now watching Emily and Jo look at each other, too. The silence was starting to get a little uncomfortable.

"I have to pee," Emily announced suddenly, the silent conversation she and Jo had been carrying on convening rather unexpectedly as she scooted her stool back from the table.

"Me, too," Jo added. Both girls stood up abruptly and walked off to the bathroom together. It all seemed like a well-choreographed dance.

Paige and Tuck both stared after them with matching bemused expressions, but Adrienne seemed completely at ease with the entire interaction they'd just witnessed.

"That was weird," Paige finally said.

"Yeah," Tuck agreed, nodding.

Adrienne surveyed them both quietly before taking pity on them.

"You know they're not actually peeing, right?" Adrienne offered, deftly tucking the statement into question form so as to soften the revelation for the oblivious twins. "Did you not have many girlfriends when you were growing up? I mean, I get you," Adrienne stated, pointing at Tuck, "cuz, you're a dude. But you really don't know about the fake-bathroom-trips?"

"Um, no, I've never had like, really close friends who were girls," Paige responded, suddenly very interested in tearing the label off of her beer bottle.

Adrienne was watching Paige closely and what she saw surprised her. A nearly imperceptible wave of sadness passed quickly across her face before Paige seemed to crest it and look back up and met Adrienne's eyes with a fierceness that took her aback. She didn't quite know what to make of it, but Adrienne tucked this small kernel of knowledge in the back of her mind to consider later.

Tuck didn't seem to have noticed the moment of unchecked emotion. "So what are they talking about in there?" he whispered conspiratorially.

Adrienne leaned forward with a smirk and said, "Probably about how good Paige was in bed. Or bad…" She grimaced over at Paige for effect.

Paige's face drained of color and she took a very long drink from her beer. Then she let out a sort of strangled laugh and chugged the rest of the bottle.

"Paige, I'm sure you were fine," Tuck said, noticing her silent panic. "I mean, we practically have identical DNA and I'm  _incredible_. So you  _have_  to be good."

"I thought you told me that if one of you was good at something, the other usually wasn't?" Adrienne tossed out.

This tiny factoid was one of the very few personal things Paige had ever told Adrienne, when the other girl had asked about her brother while they waited in line at the book signing.  _Of course, Adrienne remembered it,_ Paige thought.

"Oh no," Paige whimpered, grabbing Emily's beer and starting to drink it since she'd finished her own. She was getting the vibe she often got from Adrienne; it was a mixture of pity, ribbing that bordered on flirting, and the kind of merciless teasing Paige would expect from an older sister. "I was shit, wasn't I?" she moaned.

"Probably," Adrienne agreed with her, holding back a laugh that Paige didn't notice in her despair. "Especially if it was the first time."

Tuck couldn't help but laugh a little as well as Paige's face scrunched up. She looked like a baby who'd just eaten a lemon for the first time.

"What's so funny?" It was Jo. She and Emily had just gotten back from the bathroom and they both had very satisfied smiles on their faces now.

"Um, I was just telling these two how we left Charlie on the side of the road this afternoon," Tuck lied quickly, his instinct to protect Paige instantly overtaking his own amusement.

"Ah," Emily said wistfully, sitting back down. "That was fun. She almost cried."

Emily turned her attention to Adrienne. "Sorry about that. I'm Emily, obviously, it's nice to meet you. " She offered her hand out and Adrienne shook it.

"Yeah, I hoped that you were when you started sucking on Paige's face in the hospital earlier," Adrienne stated, leaning back smugly in her chair.

Emily could tell Adrienne was testing her, trying to get under her skin. She just smiled coolly, though, and responded.

"Nothing like a good make out sesh, huh, Adrienne?"

Adrienne looked a little taken aback. She cleared her throat and took a long draught of her beer as she surveyed Emily appraisingly.

"I like you," Adrienne finally said, a broad smile breaking across her face. Then she turned to Jo and said, "Dance with me."

Paige was completely confused now. She glanced quickly between Jo and Adrienne.

"This doesn't really seem like a dancing kind of bar," Jo said looking at Adrienne affectionately. "Nobody in here is dancing."

"So? There's music," Adrienne argued, standing up. "Come on, dance with me." She grabbed Jo's free hand and tugged at her gently until the other girl acquiesced.

"Okay! Alright, one song," Jo said, sliding off her stool and following Adrienne over to a small open area in the corner beside a juke box that had an OUT OF ORDER sign taped to its dark front.

Adrienne started out doing a move that resembled the sprinkler, maybe because TLC's Waterfalls was currently playing through the bar's sound system. Jo actually  _giggled_ at her.

"What the hell?" Paige spluttered, pointing after them.

Emily leaned into her side, nuzzled her face into Paige's neck and pulled the girl's arm around her shoulders. "Apparently," Emily said, loud enough so Tuck could hear as well, happy to share her juicy gossip, "Adrienne kept Jo company while you were with your Grandma by making out with her in the hospital chapel."

"What?! Seriously? But…I thought she liked me," Paige pouted.

"Oh how the mighty have fallen," Tuck cackled. "I can't believe you're upset about this. You should be relieved!"

"Yeah, baby," Emily added. "Now you don't have to worry about me killing your friend."

"I am. I mean…I just liked being hot," Paige said dejectedly.

"You're lucky you're adorable," Emily said, biting Paige's neck gently. "And hot."

"I think that's my cue to get our second round," Tuck announced, getting up and heading up to the bar.

"Get us some Irish Car Bombs!" Emily called to him as he left. Tuck gave her a thumbs up to indicate he had heard her.

When she turned back, Emily immediately latched her mouth onto Paige's neck, slipped one of her hands underneath the hem of Paige's shirt, and traced light, tantalizing finger tips over the girl's stomach. Paige groaned appreciatively under her girlfriend's touch, her eyes fluttering closed. Emily slowly worked her mouth up to Paige's ear, her breath hot, and whispered, "I can't wait to get you naked again."

Paige's body was responding: her heartbeat sped up, her skin flushed; but her mind couldn't help but worry about what Adrienne had said earlier. Something of her thoughts must have crossed her face because Emily pulled back.

"Paige…what's wrong?"

"Was I okay, earlier?" Paige asked.

Emily looked genuinely puzzled and slightly concerned. "Do you mean…" she began.

"The sex, Em. Was I okay?" Paige asked boldly. If she was a shitty lover, there was no reason to beat around the bush about it, she thought.

Now Emily just looked stunned. "Are you serious? You were better than  _okay._ You were incredible," Emily told her.

It was Paige's turn to look stunned now. "Seriously?" she asked, eyebrows knitted together.

"Yeah. Seriously. Where is this coming from? You didn't seem worried about this at the house."

"It was just…Adrienne figured that's what you and Jo went off to the bathroom to talk about."

"Oh. No, that's not…well, I may have mentioned it," Emily corrected herself, blushing. "But mostly we went to talk about what Jo was so damn cheerful about."

"Oh," Paige said, a small smile creeping back onto her lips. "So what did you tell Jo about me?"

"I told her," Emily said, her voice dropping to a sultry growl, "that you gave me the best orgasm of my life. And that I hope she brought some ear plugs with her."

Emily might very well have had more to say, but Paige pulled her into a searing kiss, which Emily happily responded to and they didn't break apart until the other three returned with a round of Car Bombs for everyone.


	44. The Olympus Lounge

A couple hours later, when Charlie called to tell them she and Eden were coming to pick them up, they were all fairly drunk, except for Adrienne. She had to work the next day, so she'd stopped after the Car Bomb. When Charlie and Eden arrived, Adrienne pulled Jo aside in the parking lot and kissed her thoroughly in full view of everyone, then bid them all good night and drove home.

"Shot gun!" Jo shouted as soon as Adrienne had disappeared, making her way to the front of the car.

Charlie, climbed into the driver's seat and turned to look at Jo, her eyes bright with glee over what had just happened.

"Dude," Charlie finally said in a reverent tone.

"I know!" Jo shouted back drunkenly.

"Nice," Charlie stated.

" _Yeah,_ " Jo affirmed, nodding fervently.

Emily just chuckled to herself as she climbed in the backseat. Sometimes it seemed like Jo and Charlie actually understood one another  _better_ when they were drunk. They carried on a lot of one or two word sentence that always seemed a bit lacking and out of context to everyone else, but which they never needed to clarify to one antoher.

Technically, they had one too many passengers for the size of the car now that Paige had joined their company, so Tuck decided, as he was a rather cuddly drunk, that he wanted to lay down in the laps of everyone in the backseat.

"I want to recline," he whined out as he crawled into the back seat, over Paige and then Emily, and laid his head down in Eden's lap. He looked up at her as he wiggled around, trying to get comfortable.

"Stop kicking me you butthole," Paige said, smacking him in the shin.

"Eden," Tuck sighed, ignoring his sister, "why am I destined to be surrounded by lesbians when all I want is a nice man?"

"You know, Charlie's bisexual," Eden told him, brushing his hair out of his face as she spoke, "if that makes you feel any better. And you have really great bone structure and a symmetrical face, so it's only a matter of time before you find a nice man to satisfy your testosterone needs."

"You're so nice," Tuck gushed. "You have the clearest skin of anyone I know."

"Hey, drunk twins," Charlie interrupted, "one of you needs to direct me to the house."

"I'm indisposed right now," Tuck said, throwing an arm dramatically over his face. "You do it, Paigey."

* * *

Paige only got turned around twice on the way home, which she thought was admirable since she sucked at giving directions even when she was sober. Eventually, though, they made it and everyone cheered for Paige when Charlie pulled into the driveway at last.

There was a good half hour of chaos that followed where everyone dug their belongings out of the car, Paige unlocked the door, and everyone wandered in and out shouting at each other about suitcases and pillows. At some point in the shuffle, Charlie miraculously produced two bottles of Jack Daniels from the trunk, along with a stack of plastic shot glasses.

Then Tuck found Paige's discarded shirt and bra in the hallway from earlier and he began to shout about how she'd defiled their grandparents house, Paige shouting back that he was just jealous he wasn't getting any. After that he stomped into the back bedroom and demanded to know where his bed was, which sparked the general question of where everyone was going to sleep.

Paige decided they should drag up the extra mattresses from where she and her father had stored them in the basement, so they all slogged into the garage and down the steps to the basement to collect them. But while they were in the basement, Jo noticed the dilapidated pool table and insisted that they clean it off and play a few games despite Paige repeatedly telling everyone that the table wasn't even level anymore. Before she even knew what had really happened, though, Jo and Charlie had the table cleared, Eden had located the cues and balls and then Tuck was running back upstairs on Charlie's orders to retrieve the Jack Daniels so that she and Eden could catch up with the rest of them, all while Emily was wedging some boxes underneath the table's sagging middle in an attempt to bolster it. It wasn't the first (or the last) time that Paige was left in awe at how Emily and her friends seemed to function as seamlessly as if they were each a finger on the same hand.

The basement was actually a sorely underused space in the house. It had its own brick fireplace, a half-finished kitchenette Frank had abandoned working on at some point, and long open room that could serve any number of purposes if anyone ever took the time to clean it out. The only thing that made it seem unwelcoming was the hard, concrete floor, but that could be fixed with area rugs or a laminate overlay. Paige was considering all of this, not feeling like shooting any pool herself, as she reclined on the bench of an old weight set she had perched on while everyone else split into teams and began to play. Emily joined her after taking a few shots, settling herself between Paige's legs and leaning back into her girlfriend.

Even on the wonky table, Jo was pretty good. She and Tuck who were on one team, were easily beating Charlie and Eden. Although that may have been because every few shots, Charlie and Eden would huddle together a little ways from the table and Eden would pour them each a shot.

Every time they threw one back, Charlie insisted on dedicating it  _to_  something. The dedications were getting dirtier and dirtier the drunker she got.

It started out with things like,

"To blue chalk!"

"To monkey bars!"

But pretty soon, Charlie was shouting things like,

"To dildos!"

"To anal beads!"

"To nipple clamps!"

"Why do you have to be so vulgar all the time?" Jo asked, poking Charlie in the back with her pool cue. "Why can't you toast to nice things like dolphins and rainbows?"

Charlie ignored her prodding, though, and turned to Paige instead. "You know," she said, looking around at the basement, "you could totally turn this basement into a speakeasy!"

"A speakeasy? Really?" Paige asked laughing.

"What? Why not? You could call it…" Charlie paused for a beat as she thought then her face lit up when the right name came to her. "The Olympus Lounge!"

"Where do you come up with this stuff?" Tuck wondered aloud. "You have a name for everything."

Charlie was not going to be deterred, though. She turned to Jo for confirmation, and asked, "Couldn't this be a speakeasy?"

"Oh yeah, you could totally turn this into a speakeasy! My dad and I do jobs like this all time. Basement remodels are pretty simple. This is a good space!" Jo said while she sunk another ball into one of the pockets of the pool table.

"I'm not questioning the remodeling part," Paige clarified, "just the speakeasy part."

"You could make into an little apartment or a rec room or small theater space," Eden chimed in. "Or a saloon. You could get one of those pianos that plays by itself!"

"That all sounds great," Paige chuckled. "Too bad doing any of that would require a lot of money that I don't have."

"You could have a bake sale!" Eden squealed.

Paige's face perked up at that suggestion.

"Is it bad that the bake sale idea excites me more than any of the remodeling stuff?" Paige said, immediately imagining the plethora of tasty treats she could whip up to sell.

"No," Emily said, finally putting her two cents in. "It just means you should probably remodel it into a bakery."

Paige smiled at that shrewd analysis and kissed the back of Emily's head. "You know me so well."

* * *

When Tuck started nodding off while leaning against one of the walls, his hands propped on top of his pool cue, Emily declared it was time for bed. It was a testament to how tired they were that everyone agreed. Privately, Emily was impressed that they'd all lasted as long as they did after spending the entire previous night in the car.

It shouldn't have been difficult hauling the mattress upstairs when they had six people to split the loads between. But all of them were at various levels of drunkenness and, half way up the stairs, Charlie lost her footing and fell backwards. Luckily, Jo and Tuck were behind her with the twin-size mattress, and Charlie fell into that and didn't really hurt herself other than banging her elbow on the railing. She had to reassure Eden she was fine about fifteen times before they all started moving again, however.

Once upstairs, they threw the mattresses into the middle of the living room and Paige hauled out a stack of blankets and extra pillows for them to arrange as they saw fit.

"Okay," Tuck said, nearly asleep on his feet again, "I'm going to bed. Good night you beautiful wrecking balls."

"Wait, what?!" Eden said angrily. "You aren't staying out here with us?"

"No, there's still a bed in the bedroom back here," Tuck answered. "I'm going to slee-"

"No!" Charlie chorused. "Stay with us! We want a sleep over! Don't abandon us, Theodore."

"Yeah, what if there's a burglar or something?" Eden added. "You have to stay and protect us."

"What bullshit!" Tuck laughed. "If someone breaks in here, I'm hiding behind Jo and so would you two!"

Jo shrugged and nodded. "I've sort of accepted that I'd die first in any kind of emergency situation. You're all useless cowards."

"Okay, fine. We just want to snuggle you," Charlie admitted, puppy on her best puppy dog eyes.

"Stop fighting it," Eden added, grabbing Tuck by the arms and pulling him back into the living room from the hallway. "We'll just come climb into bed with you if you go back there."

"Fine," Tuck relented. "Can I at least have some privacy to put my pajamas on?"

"You're so high maintenance," Charlie huffed, but they let Tuck head to the bathroom to change.

While he was gone, the girls all pulled out their suitcases and located their own pajamas and started changing. Paige felt a little embarrassed by the sudden amount of flesh that was on display in the room and excused herself to, "Check the doors are locked or whatever…"

"Oh, hey, Em," Charlie said, pulling out a small package from her suitcase, "here's Paige's present that came in the mail."

Emily grabbed it eagerly and waited impatiently for Paige to return so they could go upstairs to bed.

Eventually, everyone had their teeth brushed, and after a futile escape attempt to the back bedroom, Tuck was dragged back into the living room and shoved forcefully into the mattress by Eden before the other three girls climbed in around him and started piling blankets on top of themselves.

* * *

With Tuck now sandwiched securely between Charlie and Eden, grumbling loudly, but also too tired to really fight it, Paige and Emily bid everyone good night and headed up the stairs to Paige's room, switching the living room light off as they went.

Emily had her package clutched in her hands, staring down at the plain, brown paper it was wrapped in, as she followed Paige up the stairs. When the other girl stopped just inside the room, Emily ran right into her back she was so focused on her birthday present.

"What do you think it is?" Paige asked her chuckling lightly and moving around her to close the door of the bedroom.

"Hmm," Emily replied, smiling broadly. "Let's see."

She held the package up to her ear and shook it gently, but it didn't seem to make any noise. "Not handcuffs, then?"

"Um, no. I'm pretty sure that buying your girlfriend sex toys for the first birthday you spend together is considered pretty tacky," Paige laughed. "I'll keep light-bondage aids in mind for next year though."

"You definitely should," Emily said in a seductive purr as she moved across the room and climbed onto Paige's bed where she sat cross-legged.

"Jesus Fields," Paige said, "you're much kinkier than I thought you'd be."

"How did you think I'd be?" Emily asked, taking on a tone of mock hurt.

"Well," Paige grinned teasingly, "pretty vanilla, but like, super pretentious, too."

"What?!" Emily squealed.

"I thought you'd recite poetry or something while you were coming. A little Shakespeare, maybe."

"You bitch!" Emily exclaimed, laughing uncontrollably and throwing herself on top of Paige who had joined her on the bed. She tossed her present aside momentarily while she tickled Paige mercilessly.

"I'm sorry…I'm sorry!" Paige wheezed out as Emily continued her relentless tickle attack. "You're a…a….Sex God! And my Queen!"

"Fucking right I am," Emily said, easing up at Paige's apology.

Paige looked so good underneath her, though, still giggling as her breathing returned to normal, with her hair splayed out messily underneath her, that Emily couldn't help but take advantage of her position. She leaned down and ran her tongue along Paige's collarbone, up to her where her shoulder and neck met, and bit down on the sensitive flesh there. Paige gasped in surprise as Emily set to work on her neck.

"I…you…hickeys," Paige mumbled incoherently, her eyes rolling into the back of her head from the pleasure Emily's mouth elicited.

"I'm sorry, what was that?" Emily teased her, bringing her head back up so she could look at Paige.

Paige just stared at her, for a moment, still shocked by how lucky she was to have Emily Fields on top of her.

"Come here, " Paige said, using the opportunity to connect their lips, suddenly feeling very turned on, and not so very drunk or tired anymore.

It was a good half-hour of heated kissing, groping, and grinding before the two were able to calm down enough to return to the task at hand: present opening.

"Okay, you stay over there, and I'll stay over here," Paige said. They'd had to separate themselves once they realized that if they were in arms reach of each other, nothing, other than sex probably, would get accomplished. So now, sitting about 3 feet apart on top of the bed, Emily was finally about to open her birthday present.

"You're so pretty, though," Emily said fondly, head tilted slightly as she stared at Paige across from her.

"No, you stop that!" Paige said firmly, batting Emily's hand when she bit her bottom lip and started to lean forward, reaching for Paige's thigh. "Don't you want to know what I got you?"

"Of course I do," Emily responded, straightening up again as she started to peel the brown paper away from the package to reveal and blue cardboard box with tiny silver stars on it. "I just haven't been able to touch you for a month…"

Emily glanced over at Paige then and her heart melted a little, clearing the fog of arousal away from her brain for the time being. Paige's eyes were trained on Emily's hands and she was actually bouncing up and down slightly and her toes were wiggling inside of her socks she was so excited for Emily's to open her gift. Emily pried the lid off slowly and looked inside. Her face softened into a gentle smile as she pulled the book out of the box. It was a hardcover copy of her favorite poetry book,  _The Autobiography of Red_ by Anne Carson. She pulled the book out and glanced up at Paige, who was positively beaming now. Emily's heart broke a bit at what she was about to say.

"Honey, this is so sweet. You remembered my favorite author, but," Emily paused a moment pressing her lips together. "Well, I already have this one," she finished, gesturing at the book with one hand.

"I know that, silly," Paige said as she brushed off Emily's gentle let-down. "Open it!" She was so excited now that she was drumming her hands on her own thighs in anticipation.

Emily arched one eyebrow questioningly, but did as she was told. She opened the familiar book's cover and then flipped a few pages in before she spotted, on the title page, scrawled in black ink, a very unfamiliar bit of tight, blocky cursive.

 _for Emily,_  
keep writing  
respectfully, ac

It was so small, so unassuming, that for a moment Emily just stared at it, not willing to believe that it might be what she thought it was. Finally, she reached out a tentative finger and brushed it along the two initial that were signed there before pulling her fingers away abruptly, almost as if she had been burned, and pressing her fingers to her lips instead.

"Paige…" she began in a whisper, cocking her head as she continued to stare at the small inscription. "Is this? Is this real?"

"Yep! And you thought I got you handcuffs," Paige scoffed smugly. "A McCullers ties down a woman's heart before she ties her to a bed."

"How did you get this?" Emily asked in wonder.

"She came here and did a reading," Paige told her. "I went, then I waited in line after and told her about you."

"Oh my god…"

Paige shrugged. "It wasn't that big of deal. Just good timing really."

"Paige, don't say that. This is incredible. Nobody's ever…" Emily trailed off, shaking her head in disbelief. "Thank you. Can I kiss you now?"

"Yes, but just once. There's one more thing in that box," Paige said smiling as she leaned forward to meet Emily's lips.

They kissed, Emily humming contentedly against Paige's lips, and then stealing another quick peck before she leaned back again.

Emily looked back into the cardboard box she had set aside and, sure enough, there was a red envelope with her name written on it resting at the bottom. Emily pulled it out and ripped it open, pulling out a handmade card. Paige had clearly put some work into it. There were holly and garland stickers that ran around the outside of a red piece of cardstock, which acted as a frame for a smaller white piece of paper that had been glued to the red piece. Paige had drawn a picture of her house with a Christmas tree in the front yard and these sort of fleshed out stick figures that Emily was assuming, were she and Paige, on the white piece of paper. It was quite possibly the most adorable thing Emily had ever seen.

"Turn it over," Paige urged her.

Emily did and on the back, along with a couple more decorative stickers of a wreath and snowman, were the words, "You are cordially invited to a Philadelphia Christmas hosted by your favorite family, The McCullers. Food, lodging, and entertainment included. RSVP ASAP."

Emily laughed as she finished reading, but when she looked up at Paige, and took in the girl's nervous, expectant expression, she quickly leaned forward to kiss her again.

"I'll have to talk to my parents, baby, but I would absolutely  _love_ to spend Christmas with you."

Paige let out a small squeal and eagerly kissed her girlfriend.

"So what's this entertainment you've promised?" Emily asked once they had broken apart again.

"Well, I wasn't quite sure when I made that," Paige told her, flopping on to her back with a loud sigh. "But now, I'm thinking it's going to involve handcuffs. Maybe a whip? I think we have one in the basement somewhere, actually." She glanced over at Emily for confirmation, only half-way joking.

Emily grimaced, though. "I'm more of an old-fashioned spanking kind of girl."

Paige's eyebrows shot up at this comment, and a goofy grin spread across her face. "That we can try right now."

"Don't tease me, McCullers," Emily warned, her eyes darkening considerably.

"Bend over, Fields," Paige retorted, rubbing her hands together as Emily crawled over to her.

As she crawled on top of Paige, however, Emily's eyebrows creased together and her mouth turned into a slight frown.

"Wait…" Emily said, staring down at Paige, "why would your grandparents have a whip?"

Paige's eyes opened wide in horror. "Ewww! Why would you ask me that? It was probably for…crime fighting…or…it was not for sex!"

"Okay Paige, whatever you say," Emily laughed, as Paige buried her head into Emily's shoulder, groaning loudly.


	45. Dirty and Clean

When Paige woke up the next morning Emily was stretched out beside her on the bed, completely naked, with her dark hair fanned out beside her. It was quite possibly the most beautiful sight Paige had ever seen. She couldn't help but wonder what it would be like if Emily lived in Philadelphia and she could spend the night whenever she wanted. Would Paige ever get used to seeing all that flawless flesh spread out in front of her? Would she get used to seeing that ass, Emily's perfectly round and smooth ass, laid out before her with the bed sheet slipping off of it like she was posing for an old painting? Maybe. Maybe in 50 years, Paige thought, it might feel commonplace to get to see Emily so bare and vulnerable and completely hers. But even if she got used to it, she didn't think she would ever get tired of it.

Paige moved as slowly and quietly as possible, dropping a single kiss onto Emily's exposed ass cheek before she climbed out of the bed and headed into the bathroom for a shower. They were planning on going back to the hospital that day so that Emily could actually meet her Grandma Hazel. But there was no reason that Emily couldn't sleep a little longer while Paige got her shower.

She had only been in the shower for a few minutes, however, when she heard the door open and saw the cloudy shape of her girlfriend coming into the bathroom through the frosted glass of the shower stall's door.

"Can I join you?" Emily asked, opening the door to the shower a crack and humming appreciatively at the sight of Paige's naked body.

"You don't really have to ask, Em," Paige replied. She moved back slightly and made room for her girlfriend to join her.

Emily wasted no time slipping into the shower and joining Paige under the warm stream of water that was falling so deliciously over Paige's toned body. Even though she hadn't done any swimming since she'd left Stanford earlier in the month, or had much time to work out at all, Emily couldn't see much of a difference in Paige's physique. It felt the same as it had at Vallance. It tasted the same. The only difference was that Emily thought, perhaps, she could feel a bit more tension rippling just below the surface of Paige's skin. Emily knew she didn't have much time with Paige, but she wanted to do everything she could while she was there to release some of that tension.

"You woke me up with that kiss," Emily said, moving to press her body fully against Paige's, the water enveloping them both. "Interesting placement."

"I had a revelation last night," Paige said, her lips quirking in a smile as she slid her hands south to grab Emily's ass cheeks, squeezing them slightly.

"What was that?"

"Your ass, Em! Your ass is a revelation."

Emily giggled and turned in Paige's arms so she could press said body part against Paige's center by leaning forward slightly and placing her hands against the tiles of the shower wall. "You know I was serious last night about that spanking…"

Paige met her eyes before stepping behind her properly and running her hands down the length of Emily's back and over her ass again. They both knew where this was heading, but Paige was determined to take her time getting there.

She started off with a gentle slap to Emily's right ass cheek. It was barely a step above gentle, but Paige wanted Emily to squirm a little, to really want it.

"Mmmm, come on baby. Is that all you've got?" Emily taunted, looking over her shoulder and shuddering at how sexy Paige looked standing behind her with both hands wrapped firmly around Emily's waist and her eyes roaming over her body hungrily .

"How about you let me do this my way," Paige growled, leaning forward and plunging her hands in between Emily's spread legs, dragging a few fingers through Emily's already damp folds quickly before pulling her hands back to her waist again. Emily moaned loudly. She could definitely get on board with dominant Paige having her way with her. "You think I forgot about everything you said on that video? I know what you want. And I'm going to give it to you."

Paige let her hands roam over Emily's body; up over her shoulders, down along her arms and back up to cup her wet breasts, squeezing and twisting her nipples slightly until Emily was panting with want. All the while, Paige was grinding her pussy against Emily's glorious ass. Without warning, she pulled back and smacked one palm, hard, against Emily's left ass cheek. The sound echoed loudly in the shower stall.

"Fuck," Emily swore under her breath, and then hissed, "yes. More, Paige."

Paige appeased her request gladly, smacking her other ass cheek just as hard, and then pressing her own center against Emily's rear again. "Can you feel me? I'm already wet for you. Give me your hand," Paige instructed.

Emily reached back with one hand and Paige guided it in between her legs so that Emily could feel how wet she was getting just from having Emily at her mercy like this. Emily groaned, swiping her fingers easily through the wet folds. Paige shifted to Emily's left side just slightly, spread her legs, and then she leaned forward, putting one of her own hands against the wall.

"Inside," she growled into Emily's ear, and felt the other girl move two fingers down to her opening immediately before pushing inside. Just as she did so, Paige pulled her arm back and spanked her again. Both girls gasped with pleasure and Paige bit down on Emily's shoulder as Emily started to curl her fingers deep inside of her and began thrusting in and out.

Paige squeezed Emily's ass roughly as she sunk her hips down every time Emily brought her fingers up inside of her cunt. She was finding it hard to concentrate, her pussy starting to clench around Emily's digits as she continued to fuck her. With some effort, however, she was able to pull her concentration back to the task at hand, literally, and brought her hand down against Emily's ass. It was the hardest smack yet and Emily cried out, her hips jerking forward for a moment.

"Paige, please," she panted, rubbing her ass shamelessly against her girlfriend. "Please take me."

"I will," Paige panted into her ear and groaned, "but you have to keep fucking me. I want us to come together."

Emily nodded and wordlessly began to pump her fingers in and out of Paige's sopping center again. As soon as Emily started moving her fingers again, Paige snaked her free arm around Emily's front and down between her legs. She took a moment to gather some of the girl's wetness on her fingers and then pulled up to Emily's hardened clit. She started to rub loose, languid circles around the hardened nub, increasing the pressure just slightly each time she passed over the tip.

"God, you're already fucking me like a pro," Emily whined. "That's so good."

They were moving in tandem now, like a well-oil machine; Paige grinding her hips down and forward against Emily's ass just as Emily brought her fingers up while Paige aided the motion when she pulled Emily back slightly as she rubbed her clit relentlessly. It was such a delicious motion; up and down, backward and forward, and the water was pouring around their coupling all the while. Soon there weren't any more words, just the slight slap of their bodies mixed with pants and moans as they both approached their orgasms.

Paige felt the heat building to a crescendo deep inside of her. Emily could barely move her fingers anymore with how tightly Paige's pussy was clenching around her fingers. Her arm was aching from bending it behind her but she could feel how close Paige was and there was no way she was going to let up before she made her come. Emily could feel that she wasn't going to last much long either. Paige was rubbing her perfectly with tight, quick swipes over her clit.

"Fast…faster," Emily managed to gasp just as she felt Paige slam her hips into her from behind and all of her body, except for her right hand, stilling.

Paige wasn't sure how she managed to do it with her orgasm rolling through her, but she picked up her pace against Emily's clit and just a few moments later, the her body arched forward as her own orgasm crashed over her. Emily was definitely more vocal than Paige when she came. She yelled loudly, profanities spilling over her lips as Paige moaned through gritted teeth. The two of them coming together, well, Emily thought it was possibly the most erotic things she'd ever heard or experienced.

Just as Emily's first orgasm subsided, Paige pulled Emily's fingers out of her core and moved her to stand behind her properly again. Before Emily had even realized what she was doing, Paige had dropped to her knees and buried her face in between her legs from behind. She ran her tongue from through Emily's folds, past her dripping entrance and on up between her ass cheeks in one fluid motion.

"Oh my god!" Emily cried out as Paige's tongue swiped over her puckered hole and even further up before it came back down and swirled around the bud momentarily, Paige's strong hands pulling the cheeks apart for better access. Emily's eyes nearly rolled back into her head from how good it felt as Paige worshipped her ass, licking the crease and biting at her cheeks. She pressed her ass back into Paige's face, her mouth hanging open in silent scream of ecstasy.

If Emily thought it couldn't feel any better, well, she was wrong. Paige kept her mouth busy with Emily's ass, but she took one of her hands and ran it slowly but purposefully, up the inside of her girl's leg until she was teasing her entrance and when Emily pressed back into Paige's face again, Paige slipped two fingers deep inside her and began to fuck her in earnest.

Emily could hardly believe that they'd only had sex for the first time yesterday. Paige was just  _so good._ She had found that spot inside of Emily easily and she made sure to hit it each time she curled her fingers inside of Emily's cunt. Emily was seeing stars, literally. Lights seemed to be popping in front of her eyes as Paige brought her free hand around and up and pinched Emily's clit roughly, throwing her into what could only be described as violently incredible orgasm. Her whole body was shaking and she could barely keep herself up as she climaxed against Paige's blessedly skillful hands. Paige helped her ride out her second orgasm, gently rubbing her clit again, and then she lowered her to shower floor beside her.

Emily leaned her head back against the wall, her eyes closed, and a thoroughly satisfied grin gracing her face. After she'd caught her breath again, a laugh bubbled up from Emily's chest, filling up the shower stall around them.

"What's so funny?" Paige asked from beside her.

"That was just so much better than anything I've ever imagined," Emily replied giddily. "You're some kind of sex prodigy, sweetheart."

"Well, I love you. Maybe that's why it's so good," Paige told her honestly, staring at her adoringly.

"God, how'd I get so lucky?" Emily said, finally opening her eyes again and soaking in the gorgeous woman that was sprawled beside her. "I love you too," she said, leaning in and giving Paige a sweet kiss.

"You know, I actually do need to shower. Please stop distracting me."

"Nuh uh. No way I'm apologizing for that. You started it," Emily giggled.

"Come on jelly legs," Paige teased, standing up, holding her hands out to Emily, and hoisting the girl back to her feet. "Let's get clean."

* * *

"Jesus Christ, Paige," Charlie said loudly when the two finally emerged from the upstairs bedroom an hour later, both of them dressed and ready for the day. "What the hell were you doing to her this morning? I woke up to Emily screaming!"

Paige blushed violently at Charlie blatantly calling them out. Emily, however, was an old hand at dealing with Charlie's sass.

"Wouldn't you like to know?" Emily replied offhandedly. "Leave my girlfriend alone." She shot a glare at Charlie that told her to drop it and stop teasing.

Paige was not used to people who commented so openly on each other's sex lives. Emily may have been fine with how blasé her friends were about sharing their experiences, but Paige was definitely not, and Emily wasn't going to let Charlie make her uncomfortable.

"So what's the plan for today?" Eden asked cheerily, emerging from the bathroom after having just finished putting her make up on.

"I want to go see Grandma!" Tuck shouted from the kitchen.

"Uh, yeah, I wanted to take Emily to the hospital so she could actually meet our Grandma," Paige agreed. "I don't know if you guys want to come meet her, too, but after that, I dunno. I mean, I didn't know you guys were coming or I could've thought of cool stuff for us to do."

Paige couldn't help but feel some pressure on her to make sure that Emily and her friends had as good of a time visiting Philadelphia as she did visiting Vallance. But whenever she was put on the spot like this, her mind blanked out. She hoped her twin would have some ideas for fun group activities.

Thankfully Tuck popped up behind her at that moment and slung an arm over her shoulder. She felt more relaxed immediately when her brother's grinning face came into view. As much as Paige loved Emily, she still felt like a bit of an outsider when they were with her friends. But Tuck? Tuck was Paige's. No matter how close he became with Emily, Jo, Charlie, and Eden, he had shared a womb with Paige. It wasn't even a question: Tuck belonged to Paige in the grand scheme of things. And she belonged to him, too. She knew he would think of something for them to do.

"I have an idea, actually," he said, wiggling his eyebrows up and down. "If everyone's up for a little physical activity."

"I think Emily's had too much already," Charlie said, starting to laugh, but she was quickly silenced.

Eden put her entire hand over Charlie's face and pushed her back out of the loose circle they had formed in the living room. "Don't mind her. She's just upset I wouldn't let her shower with me."

"Edie!" Charlie's muffled voice groaned from behind her, but Eden just pushed her down onto the mattress and turned her attention back to Tuck. "What's your idea?"

"Ice skating?" he threw out to the group at large.

Paige groaned, but everyone else seemed keen on the idea and murmured their various forms of assent happily. Paige definitely preferred water in its liquid state. She and the frozen element didn't get along very well. But she wanted the girls to have fun, and she was sure that they would have fun at the ice rink, even if Paige did have to hug the wall and make a fool of herself in front of her girlfriend. She could do that, especially after she'd just blown Emily's mind in the shower. Surely ice skating ranked a hell of lot lower than sex did on the girlfriend skills résumé.

* * *

After eating breakfast, everyone headed to the hospital; Tuck, Eden, and Charlie were in one car and Paige, Emily, and Jo were in the other.

"Charlie's kind of an asshole," Jo said suddenly from the backseat when they were pulling into the parking lot. "But she has a good heart, you know. She just doesn't really get personal space. Especially with us. Don't let her get to you, okay Paige? She's not trying to be mean. It's her weird way of showing love."

Paige smiled as she pulled the Buick into a parking space. "I'll keep that in mind," she said, turning around to look at Jo. "This girl talk sharing thing is just still pretty new for me," Paige admitted shrugging.

"Believe me, I know. It took me like 6 months of working with Charlie in the scene shop before I realized that when she told me I looked like I needed to get laid, she was just trying to tell me she cared about me."

Emily laughed loudly in the passenger seat. "God, the first time I met Charlie, it was at the Theatre Open House freshman year. Do you remember that? She was literally winking at me from across the room. I think she and Eden had some kind of bet going."

"That sounds about right," Jo agreed as they all climbed out of the car.

"So…she likes me?" Paige asked, still unsure what to make of Charlotte Cole.

"Dude, she loves you!" Jo replied instantly. "You'll get used to her." Jo patted Paige on the back as they made their way through the parking lot.

Paige headed in the hospital first when they reached the doors and Emily grabbed Jo by the sleeve to stop her for a moment. "Thank you," she said to her friend.

Jo merely nodded, smiled, and headed in after Paige.

* * *

Tuck, Eden, and Charlie were waiting for them in the lobby and together they all headed up to the geriatric ward.

"Okay, so, no pressure," Paige said quietly to Emily in the elevator, "but Grandma Hazel is like the most important person in my life besides Tuck. I love her more than my own parents, but uh, don't tell them that when….I mean,  _if_ you meet them."

"Baby, I know," Emily said, slipping her hand into Paige's in the hopes that it would calm her down. "You talk about her all the time. I know how much she means to you. I'm really happy I get to meet her."

Paige exhaled and nodded. "Okay. Good."

When they got to the right floor, they all piled out and Paige took the lead, steering the motley crew toward her Grandma's room.

"Grandma?" Paige said, leaning her head into Hazel's room to make sure she was awake and not seeing one of her doctors before they all piled in.

"Hello Dearheart!" Hazel called happily from her bed. She had been hoping that Paige would bring Emily by to meet her today.

"Are you up for a little…well, actually, A LOT of company?" Paige asked smiling.

"I love it! Bring 'em in."

Paige waved everyone forward and one by one the filed into the room and introduced themselves to Hazel.

"Come on, come on," Hazel said, bringing them each in for a hug.

"Hi Mrs. McCullers," Jo said politely, "I'm Jo."

"Oh please, just call me Grandma," Hazel insisted.

"Okay," Jo said smiling sweetly.

Charlie was next. "Hi Grandma!" she said throwing her arms around the old woman's neck and squeezing her tight. "I'm Charlie."

"Oof," Hazel laughed as Charlie hugged her. "You're a good hugger!"

Eden was behind her. "Hello Grandma Hazel," Eden said in a serious tone. "It's truly an honor to meet you. My name is Eden. That is a lovely nightgown you have on. I appreciate a woman who can pull off pastels."

Hazel burst out laughing at that and yanked Eden in for a hug, too. "The pleasure's all mine, dear."

Finally, Emily pulled her hand out of Paige's grasp and moved forward to meet Hazel.

"Well, from the googley eyes Paige is making at you," Hazel said, "I'm going to guess that you must be Emily."

"You would be right," Emily beamed, looking back at Paige and winking at her before settling herself on the edge of Hazel's bed, leaning in to the woman who had Paige's exact same eyes, and wrapping her arms tightly around her. "It is so so good to meet you."

Tuck moved around her to sit on the opposite side of the bed from Emily and gave Hazel a kiss on the cheek. Everyone started talking then, answering all Hazel's questions about where they were each from, how old they were, and what they were studying at Vallance. Each of the girls seemed so genuinely happy to just be sitting there, chatting with Hazel. It was all Paige could do to stand back and take it all in for a few minutes. This sort of thing just didn't happen to her. She didn't make friends or fall in love. Those sorts of things happened to other girls. But here they all were,  _her people,_  squeezed in around the bed, and emanating warmth like they each held a tiny sun inside of their chests.

In that moment, as much as it terrified her to think it, Paige saw her whole life, behind and ahead, stretching out from the hospital room they were gathered in. Paige only hoped she wouldn't fuck it all up somehow because these people were beginning to mean everything to her— much more than she had bargained for when she had first visited Vallance over a year ago.


	46. As Simple as Shaving Soap

"So, you're classes start in January?" Emily asked, wincing slightly at the death grip Paige had on her hand as they slowly skated their way around the ice rink.

"Yeah…." Paige responded, rather distracted by how horribly unstable she felt and how intensely she was concentrating on not falling down while still continuing some semblance of forward motion and managing to talk at the same time. "I kind of left Stanford mid-semester so I had to wait for the new semester to start. But I'm all enrolled and ready to go."

"Oh my god, Paige," Emily said grabbing her girlfriend's shoulder and stopping them in the middle of the rink, "you have to let go of my hand. I think you're going to break it!"

"I'm sorry!" Paige responded, immediately letting go of Emily's hand. She felt horrible as she watched Emily ball her hand into a fist and release it several times, bringing the blood flow back into her aching appendage. "Are you okay?" she asked nervously.

Emily chuckled a little bit, shaking her hand out now, and pecked Paige on the lips. "It'll be fine. Just uh, try to relax a little bit okay?"

"Alright," Paige grinned sheepishly. "Sorry, I just  _hate_ skating. Tuck and I took lessons for a while in elementary school. As per usual, he was amazing at it," Tuck skated past them gracefully at that moment, demonstrating her point, "and I just ended up with a concussion."

"Aww, baby," Emily cooed, circling around Paige so that the girl could grab her other hand as they started moving forward again at a snail's pace. "How did you get a concussion?"

"Our lesson had ended, but our Dad was late picking us up. So we were screwing around on the ice and Tuck wanted to race. And, you know," Paige said, shrugging, "he had challenged me, so I _had_ to try, at least. Even though we both knew that he was way better than me. So we did, and I totally bit it and fell backwards and smacked my head really hard on the ice."

"Okay I know I'm friends with Tuck, and I love the boy, but I'm not as fond of Paige's-brother-Tuck as I am of my-friend-Tuck."

Paige let out a bark of laughter. "I don't blame you! I'm more fond of him some days than others."

"So did you guys get in trouble when you told your Dad?"

"Oh, well, we didn't actually tell him. But when he got here, I couldn't walk straight and I wasn't making much sense with the things I was saying. And I guess Tuck looked really guilty and wouldn't let go of me, like trying to steady me or whatever. Which definitely wasn't normal since we were usually trying to push each other over. But to be honest I don't really remember it that well. Maybe we did tell him…because he took me to the hospital."

"No more head injuries, okay?" Emily said, unable to keep from worrying about her girlfriend's precious noggin. "I'd like you to keep as many brain cells as possible. I'm pretty fond of your brain. It needs to stay in tip top shape until we're at least 80."

Paige stopped skating again when Emily said that. She wasn't usually a person who spent a great deal of time daydreaming or imagining what her future was going to be like. She wondered about it sometimes, but had never been able to conjure up much of a mental image of it. Suddenly, though, it was all too easy to imagine herself growing old with Emily Fields.

"You wanna be with me until we're 80?" Paige asked Emily, smiling and cocking her head to one side.

"Longer, hopefully. Barring any unforeseen head injuries or triple dog dares," Emily giggled while she said it, but her eyes held Paige's so steadily there could be no question as to whether or not she was serious.

It was a strange feeling, the one that swept over Paige when Emily said this to her. No one had ever dared to want her so thoroughly and so openly before. It was exciting to have someone lay claim to her and her future so unapologetically, to say that they wanted in and wanted a part of it. The feeling reminded her of something that she couldn't quite put her finger on. There was a certain weightless, floating quality to her emotions at the moment, but she couldn't quite pinpoint of what it reminded her.

Then it came to her— memories of being a kid and riding around on her Dad's shoulders in the mall, or being carried in her Mom's arms through the grocery store. Paige had loved being carried, not because it meant she didn't have to walk or do any of the work. What Paige loved was the feel of her father's cheeks under her tiny hands, the bumpy texture of his skin after he'd just shaved, or how soft the skin of her mother's arms were, the way her perfume completely enveloped her when she was nestled into her neck. It was the closeness that Paige loved, that bond between the holder and the held. She remembered suddenly, her heart speeding up, the day she was 5 and her family was at an amusement park. She had been riding on her father's back, arms linked around his neck, his hands supporting her legs, when it had happened. He put her down and said something like, "You're getting awfully heavy kiddo." It was a throw away comment, tossed out as set her down and stretched his back. She knew he hadn't meant it to hurt her, but from that day forward, Paige had always felt guilty anytime she had asked one of parents to hold her or carry her. There was one exception to that, though, and maybe it had been one of the reasons Paige had come to love swimming so much. In the pool, she wasn't heavy. She could spend the entire day wrapped around her Mom or Dad and not feel bad about it at all.

That was what it felt like—weightless, guilt-free, unapologetic holding—when Emily looked at her with such sureness and suggested with such a casual air that they spend their entire lives together. Paige was finally starting to feel like she wasn't a burden, like she could let someone hold her again without fear of their arms growing tired and their strength giving out.

"Em, can I ask you something?" Paige said, still staring into Emily's sure and steady eyes.

Charlotte Cole had never had good timing with much of anything and this moment was no different. She had spent the last 5 minutes talking Tuck into grabbing Paige by the arms and skating with her away from Emily. So, just as Paige was about to pour her heart out to Emily, who was on the edge of her seat to hear whatever it was Paige was going to ask her, Tuck and Charlie came flying toward them, each of them seizing one of Paige's arms and skated off with her suspended between them, screaming.

"Oh my god! Emilyyyyy! Help me! Put me down!" Paige yelled out.

Emily was a little annoyed that their rather serious moment had been interrupted, but Paige also looked so cute and terrified that she couldn't help but laugh at the situation.

It came as no surprise that Tuck was the best ice-skater of them all. He was a dancer after all. Eden wasn't half bad either. She was comfortable on the ice, could pick up a decent amount of speed, and could also skate backwards fairly competently. Jo was fair. She was a little stiff, but she could stop well enough that she wasn't scared of running into anything, and that was half the battle in Emily's opinion. Emily and Jo were pretty evenly matched in the ice-skating department it turned out. Charlie was, well, Charlie. Skill level didn't matter at all. She skated as fast as she could, with complete abandon and crashed into the walls and the ground at least twice every five minutes or so, laughing every time she did. Eden had spent most of the afternoon chasing her around and trying to convince her to stop attempting to do jumps and twirls. But then Charlie would pick her up and spin her around and kiss her and Eden would forget what she was on about in the first place. That is until Charlie plowed head first into the Plexiglass wall again.

Pretty soon after Paige had been kidnapped from Emily's side, Jo suggested they play a game of tag, and the rest of their time was spent chasing each other around the ice rink and using Paige as the home base since she wasn't moving around much anyway. They only stopped when Charlie fell so hard trying to get away from Tuck that she got a black eye, split her lip, and got blood all over the ice. The attendant had to shoo them all off the rink at that point anyway because they had to clean and sanitize the rink so they headed to the grocery store to get supplies for dinner.

* * *

"So, what do you guys want to have?" Paige asked the group as she pushed their shopping cart through the frozen section of the store. "Other than peas?" she added as she watched Eden extract a bag of the vegetable and press it against Charlie's right eye, which was turning a nasty shade of brown, until the other girl grabbed it herself and held it in place.

"Um…maybe a casserole would be best? It'd be easy to cook and get everything into one pan," Tuck suggested. "What's that one Grandma used to make all the time with the beans and the cornbread on top?"

"Oh um, that's the Chuckwagon casserole. We could do like a double batch of that," Paige nodded. "And I could make a cake!"

"What's with you and baking lately?" Emily asked laughing.

"I don't know," Paige shrugged. "I've been doing it a lot since Grandma's been in the hospital cuz she likes to hand out cookies and brownies, that sort of thing, to the nurses and doctors in her ward. I've kind of been getting into it, actually, looking up new recipes and stuff. Everyone is always so happy when come by with the treats. It's just nice."

"You should be a baker, Paige," Jo said joining the conversation. "I remember that red velvet cake you made us at The Log. That thing was so good! Charlie still won't shut up about it."

"Those box mixes just don't taste as good!" Charlie said, her voice muffled because she was now holding another bag of peas to her fat lip. "Will you make another for us? Please, Paige?"

"You look so pathetic right now, you idiot," Eden sighed, surveying her pea-laden girlfriend.

Paige just laughed at the pleading look Charlie was shooting her with her one good eye and gave in. "Yes, I'll make it just for you, Charlie."

"She's hard to say no to when she's injured," Eden commented sympathetically, patting Paige on the back.

"Okay, I'm going to send you all out to get few things so this will go faster," Paige said, then rattled off ingredients to each of them off the top of her head and everybody, except for Emily set out to find their items.

"What about me?" Emily asked, leaning towards Paige from the front end of the shopping cart and giving her a very sexy look that had Paige losing her concentration within seconds.

"Uh," Paige said, staring at Emily's lips and licking her own, "you have a very important job. And that is to decide which position you want to fuck me in tonight."

Emily's eyes opened wide and she let out a breathy chuckle at Paige's statement. She wasn't expecting her to be quite so forward in the middle of the grocery store.

"Well I am way ahead of you there, McCullers," Emily responded. "I've been planning that since we got out of the shower this morning. Anything else I can do for you, sweetheart?"

Paige grinned. "Nope, I'm keeping you with me. Let's go get the cake ingredients."

"Okay!" Emily said happily, climbing into the shopping cart itself.

"You're so flipping cute, Fields," Paige mumbled, shaking her head and pushing the cart toward the dairy aisle.

"So, what were you going to ask me earlier, you know, before Tuck and Charlie grabbed you?"

"Oh, um. I just kind of wanted to talk to you about our relationship," Paige admitted.

"Anything in particular, or just how awesome it is in general?" Emily asked, leaning her back against the front of the cart and surveying Paige as she picked out some eggs.

Paige smirked and moved to grab some milk from the other side of aisle.

"I had a topic in mind, but I'd kind of rather discuss it later when we're both naked in my bed."

"My goodness, someone has a one-track mind tonight," Emily said, biting her lip. "I was thinking you might be on top of your desk, though."

Paige laughed. "The desk, huh?" She looked up with a thoughtful expression on her face, obviously visualizing the two of them having sex on her desk. "Mmm, yeah, we should definitely do it on the desk. And hello? It's kind of hard not to have a one track mind when you're looking all sexy and sitting in my shopping cart."

"Kiss me," Emily said as Paige handed her a block of cream cheese. So, Paige leaned forward and melded her lips into Emily's soft mouth until they were moving slowly together with Paige bracing herself above Emily, her hands on the sides of the cart. They had just started to get a little too into it, Emily slipping her tongue into Paige's mouth and earning herself a deep moan in return when a loud throat clearing interrupted them and the two were met with the disapproving look of a mother who was pushing her toddler in their shopping cart past them. "No one wants to see that," she snipped at them as she stopped in front of the butter section.

Paige immediately blushed a deep crimson as the woman sneered at them. But then Charlie came up behind them, with Eden close behind and said loudly to the judgmental woman, "Ew, lesbians! Can you believe they let us out in public?" She peeled the peas off her face then and, taking a step toward the woman, said, "Boo!"

Eden dumped the groceries they'd collected into Emily's lap and turned to face the woman with her hands on her hips.

"Can we help you with you something?" Eden asked, staring the woman down.

"As a matter of fact, yes, you could act appropriately and stop making a spectacle of your sexuality. You're in the middle of a grocery store right now."

"What exactly is it about two people expressing their love for each other that you find so inappropriate?" Eden challenged.

"This a family establishment. People bring their kids here," the woman growled. "I don't want my son seeing something like that."

"What a coincidence," Eden replied. "We're a family, too."

"In what world do two women constitute a family?" the woman jeered, glancing at each of them in turn.

"In this world," Eden answered her. "And I hope you'll realize that before your child is old enough to notice how bigoted and hateful you are. It's people like  _you_ that are the problem, not us. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some love to spread around." And as if they had rehearsed it a thousand times, Charlie sidled up to her side, smiling, and Eden slid a firm hand around the back of her neck, turned, pulled her in and kissed her soundly on the mouth.

The woman scoffed loudly and stormed out of the aisle, pushing her cart away so quickly that she accidently ran into the side of the refrigerated case as she turned. The cart struck it with a loud clang and the woman's child began to cry as she angrily turned the corner and disappeared.

"Eden, wow…" Paige said, seriously impressed and more than a little touched by what had just transpired.

"Don't ever hide your relationship, Paige, okay?" Eden fumed. Her brown eyes looked black with anger. "There's nothing wrong with you. There's nothing wrong with any of us."

Charlie kissed her girlfriend's forehead soothingly and whispered, "I love you. It's okay."

"Put your peas back on, Charlotte. I love you, too," Eden answered her.

Emily slid her hand into Paige's and they met each other's eyes. "Let's go make some dinner," Emily said.

Paige nodded, her heart still beating a little faster than normal. She was very glad Eden and Charlie had come along when they did.

* * *

"My ass is kind of sticking to this wood," Paige said, wincing, "now that I'm all sweaty."

Emily pulled back from the nipple she was sucking on.

"Is it okay if we move to the bed now?" Paige asked.

"Only if I can do you again," Emily smirked. "That's fine with me."

It was nearly 1 o'clock in the morning and Paige and Emily had only been alone for about an hour.

After everyone had gotten home from the store, they made dinner together—an event that took nearly two hours just to make, let alone eat. Jo had asked early on in the process if anyone would mind if she called Adrienne and invited her over to join them, to which no one had objected. In general, Eden, Charlie, and Emily were extremely supportive whenever Jo expressed interest in someone because it happened so infrequently. Paige had turned on Jeopardy at 6:30 and they'd all shouted out the answers they knew until the casseroles were all assembled and cooking in the oven. Charlie had actually ended up getting the most right. She had a surprisingly wide knowledge of trivia, especially random sports facts. Once Paige pulled the cake out of the oven and had it cooling on the counter they moved out to the dining room and dug into the casseroles. Adrienne turned up just as Tuck realized he had eaten the last of the second casserole. Adrienne demanded a double portion of the cake to compensate for getting no dinner and having to eat Ritz crackers instead. Once the cake was demolished, they'd spent the rest of the night changing into an assortment of Frank and Hazel's old formal clothes that Paige had found in the upstairs closet and taking mock Prom pictures in the living room together.

Paige and Emily had finally escaped after Adrienne went home again and the others had headed to bed. One desk orgasm later and Paige couldn't help but think from that look Emily was giving her that they were just getting started.

Emily pulled her off the desk and they moved across the room to flop down on Paige's bed. Paige quickly rolled back on top of Emily and began kissing her neck, hoping to pick up where they had left off on the desk.

"Hold on a second there, Paige Darlene," Emily interrupted.

Paige burst out laughing. "I'm seriously never going to tell you what my actual middle name is because I love it when you call me that. I like having inside jokes with you."

"I promise I won't ever stop," Emily replied and allowed Paige to carry on lavishing attention on her chest now. It just felt so fucking good. But Emily was promised some sort of relationship conversation and for once, she actually wanted to have it. When she'd dated Maya in high school, her heart sank anytime the other girl had said she wanted to talk. It wasn't like that with Paige. When Paige had told her she wanted to talk about their relationship in the grocery store, she'd just felt curious and maybe a tad eager. With difficulty, Emily pulled her mind away from its sex induced haze and tugged Paige's head back up to her own. "Can we talk now?"

"Right now?" Paige asked, glancing suggestively down at their naked bodies that were currently sweat slicked and subconsciously undulating slightly against each other. "I was kind of in the middle of something."

"We can stay up all night fucking as far as I'm concerned," Emily said touching the tip of her nose to Paige's for a second. "But I've been waiting like 8 hours to hear what you were going to ask me at the rink."

"Ugh," Paige sighed, rolling off of her girlfriend. "Fair enough." She grinned over at Emily, capturing her heart all over again.

"God, I'm such a sap for you," Emily giggled. "You just smiled at me and now my insides feel like mush. I love you so much."

Paige gazed at her adoringly for a few moments. "That's kind of what I wanted to talk to you about. I mean, at the rink. When you said you wanted to be with me until we're 80…I just…that's like, huge. Nobody has ever said something like that to me. It made me really happy. And, I don't know. I guess I just wondered if it ever worries you how fast this all happened?" Paige gestured between their two bodies to illustrate that she meant their relationship.

"Well, it's not that fast. I mean, we met over a year ago," Emily said.

"Yeah but, that was for like 2 hours, one night. And we didn't see each other again for 6 months. And then I freaked out and we went another 6 months before anything really happened between us. This has only been real for like 2 months. And we've already said I love you to each other."

"You think it was too soon?" Emily asked gently.

"I'm not saying to don't feel it," Paige hurriedly said. She didn't want Emily to think she was saying she didn't love her. "Sometimes I just wonder if we should have waited or something? I don't know. It's a stupid thought, I know, but people always talk about how you don't want to say the L world too soon."

"It's not stupid, Paige," Emily reassured her. "It definitely caught me off guard how quickly I fell in love with you. It was kind of scary how much I felt for you so fast, especially considering we don't even live in the same town."

"Yeah, tell me about it," Paige agreed.

"I don't think it's something we can control, though," Emily went on. "Attraction and love. I feel like those are things that just happen to people. And we can either acknowledge them or not. Act on them or not."

Emily took a long pause before she continued. "I know I quote poetry and talk about poetry a lot, but…"

"Tell me," Paige said, looking into her eyes. "I love the way you love words."

Emily smiled and kissed Paige before she spoke again. "Well, there's this poem that I found when I was about 16, when I first really started getting into poetry. It's called  _Courage_ and it's by a woman named Anne Sexton. And it's all about those little things we do throughout our lives that maybe don't seem very brave when we're doing them, like when a baby takes its first step. They just seem like every day things, mundane, ordinary. But they take a lot of courage to do. The part I really like, that I was just thinking of, it says,

_If your buddy saved you_ _  
_ _and died himself in so doing,_ _  
_ _then his courage was not courage,_ _  
_ _it was love; love as simple as shaving soap."_

"Love is courage?" Paige asked, seeing if she had gotten the gist of what Emily was trying to say.

"I think love is an emotion and when we translate it into actions, it becomes courage. I think that's what I'm trying to say," Emily said thoughtfully. "So, maybe we're just really brave, for saying it so soon and admitting we were feeling it."

"I agree with you for the most part," Paige said, smiling.

"The floor is yours," Emily said smiling back, very interested to hear Paige's thoughts on the matter.

"Well, you said that you don't think we can control love. That it just happens and we acknowledge it or not. I don't think that's it exactly. I think it kind of starts like that, but then, like my grandparents were together for 40 years. That was a choice. It had to be. They had to wake up every morning and choose to be together and love each other. I think you have to choose to keep loving someone."

"You have really beautiful thoughts," Emily whispered.

"That's where the courage comes in though, right? In the choosing."

They laid there in silence for a few minutes, just staring at each other, until Emily finally vocalized her thoughts.

"I had three really close friends in highschool. I mean, I still have them, we're still friends. But, after I discovered that poem, I used to sign their birthday cards and stuff, 'Love you like shaving soap,'" Emily said, a little laugh escaping her mouth. "Because I did, you know? I would have jumped in front of a car for any of them. I forgot I used to say that, though."

"Have you ever loved anyone like that romantically?" Paige asked. Emily had briefly mentioned that she had a fairly serious girlfriend in high school during the numerous phone conversations they'd had over the past two months.

"Not until now," Emily told her quietly. "I love you like shaving soap, Paige. In all those tiny little everyday things that end up meaning everything."

"'As simple as shaving soap'," Paige repeated from what Emily had quoted earlier.

"It may be simple, but it also takes a lot of courage to love you," Emily said.

"You mean because we're gay?" Paige asked.

"That's a whole other matter," Emily said, sighing heavily. "I mean, that definitely takes courage when there are bitches in the grocery store judging us all the time and thinking there's something wrong with everyone who isn't coupled off boy/girl. It does take a lot of courage to be out. But I just meant loving someone in general. It takes a lot of courage to put it out there and be vulnerable and maybe end up getting hurt."

"Agreed," Paige said. "And for the record, Emily Fields, I love you like shaving soap, too."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please take another 5 minutes out of your life and go read Courage by Anne Sexton. It's a great poem.


	47. Instinct

Emily woke up to the sound of her phone chiming. Paige's bedside clock was turned away from her when she opened one bleary eye and lifted herself up on one arm to reach over Paige's body, which she was curled tightly around, to reach for her cell phone, so she wasn't sure what time it was. Judging by the sun light, sounds of birds chirping, and the sight of her adorable, snoozing girlfriend, though, she didn't think it was even mid-morning yet. Emily fondly took in Paige's tousled hair and the way she was pressed snuggly back against Emily's front. Since the first time they had slept in a bed together, Paige had consistently been the little spoon. Emily loved how much vulnerability Paige showed around her. It made it easy to trust her and be vulnerable in return.

Once she had snatched her phone off the bedside table, Emily laid back down, thoroughly enjoying the delicious feeling of she and Paige's naked bodies touching at every point possible. After reveling in their combined flesh for a few moments, Emily turned on the screen of her phone and read the message she found there.

It was from Tuck and it simply said, "We thought you two would like to spend some time alone before we have to drive back today. We are going for breakfast. Back around 11:30! Have fun ;)" Emily grinned, noticing it was only 8:30 am. They had three hours all to themselves before Emily had to leave and now that she was awake, Emily didn't want to waste a minute of it.

Paige was still breathing deeply and peacefully, obviously asleep. Emily almost felt bad as she began to run her hand over her girlfriend's back and sides, but she was soon lost in Paige's soft skin. She lightly traced her fingertips down over Paige's hips and on to her legs, scratching lightly as she brought her hand back up again. Still Paige didn't move, so Emily started placing open-mouthed kisses on the girl's spine and then lightly grazing her teeth along Paige's shoulder.

This got a tiny bit more of a response. Paige groaned slightly and muttered something about "my freestyle time," but then she just adjusted her body a tad, so she was leaning back into Emily more and slipped back into her swimming dream.

Emily bit her lip as Paige's breasts came into full view and she moved her hand lightly a few times over Paige's stomach before moving up to fondle her girlfriend's tits. Paige had amazing tits, Emily thought as she caressed them. They were on the small side, but big enough that they bounced and jiggled sexily when the two of them were fucking. Emily loved to watch them, especially when Paige was on top. Her nipples were a light red color and then, of course, there was that nipple piercing that drove Emily crazy. After rubbing them both for a couple of minutes, Paige's nipples were both hard, but the girl herself had yet to rouse, so Emily leaned down and took the closet nipple in her mouth, sucking at it and lavishing attention on it with her tongue.

Finally, Paige woke up and it only took her about a millisecond to realize that Emily was going to town on her breasts and the rest of her mind quickly caught up to what the rest of her body had been reacting to for a while. She was extremely turned on, she realized, as she watched Emily lap hungrily at her chest.

"Oh god, Em," Paige moaned, sliding a hand into Emily's black hair, tugging her closer to her body. "Yes, mmmm, suck on it. God, I love your mouth."

"I will continue momentarily," Emily said, lifting her head up and pecking her now-conscious girlfriend on the lips, "but I just want you to know that you're probably going to die in a fire."

"Wha—ohhhh," Paige's confusion died on her lips as Emily's mouth returned to their previous activity and her right hand began teasing up and down Paige's inner thighs.

"You could sleep through anything, I'm pretty sure. Including a fire alarm. By the way, we have three hours all to ourselves," Emily murmured, her mouth never leaving Paige's skin as she kissed around her chest. "So I'm going to make you fall apart at least as many times."

Paige's eyes rolled back as Emily's hand finally dipped between her legs, running lazily up and down her slit. "Think you can do that for me, baby? Cum three times?"

Emily had leaned down close to Paige's ear as she spoke and now she ran her tongue around the shell before sucking Paige's earlobe into her mouth, drawing a breathy whimper from the girl beside her. "Answer me, Paige," Emily husked, releasing the lobe from her mouth with a small pop.

"Yes…yes, I'll—" Paige tried to answer, but Emily slipped her middle finger inside of her and all other coherent thought was lost.

"I love how wet you get for me," Emily said, adding another finger, and beginning to pump slowly in and out of Paige, picking up her pace with every thrust.

"More," Paige whimpered, pulling Emily's head up to her own and kissing her deeply.

"More how, Paige?" Emily asked, crawling on top of girlfriend properly and crouching in between her spread legs. "Tell me what you want."

"Another finger," Paige husked, locking eyes with Emily. "And I want to be kissing you when you make me come."

Emily didn't answer, but she pushed Paige's legs up so her knees were level with her chest pressed herself down on top, her face hovering only inches above Paige's. Then, as she pulled out and entered again with three fingers, kissed her roughly, capturing the moan of pleasure that spilled out of Paige's throat.

It wasn't long before Paige was arching up into her, mouth open in a silent scream as she came.

* * *

An hour and half later, Paige and Emily were still naked in bed, laying in each others' arms and staring in such an embarrassingly sappy way that Paige was glad no one else could see them. She was sure the girls would tease them mercilessly if they caught them literally doing nothing but sighing deeply and staring dreamily into one another's eyes.

"Can I ask you something?" Emily said quietly, not wanting to do anything to disturb the peaceful atmosphere that had descended on them after sex.

"The woman who gives me three orgasms in one morning is allowed to ask whatever she wants," Paige replied grinning.

"When I was trying to wake you up, I think you were having a dream about swimming. But, since you left Stanford," Emily started hesitantly, watching Paige's face carefully so she could avoid upsetting her, "you haven't talked about swimming. At all. Are you…missing it? I've been wanting to ask you about it for awhile, but I didn't want to upset you."

Paige gave her such a warm, understanding smile that Emily couldn't help but sigh in relief.

"Of course I miss it," Paige answered. "It was pretty much my whole life for 6 years. I really love swimming. Well, I used to love swimming."

"What are you talking about? You looked like you were enjoying yourself when we swam together at Vallance."

"I did! I loved swimming with you and everyone. But…it's hard to explain, I guess. Swimming at school, while it was very important to me, well, it stopped being fun a long time ago. It was more like a job. Something I had to do. Like keeping my grades up."

"Really? I didn't know…" Emily trailed off.

"Too be honest, I didn't really notice what a relief it was to  _not_  have to worry about it until I didn't have to anymore. Competitive swimming is really stressful," Paige explained, her eyes wide. "Always stressing over my times and training. There wasn't any time to just enjoy it the way I did in high school."

"So you're not disappointed that you left the team?" Emily asked.

"Oh god, no," Paige said, her face falling when she realized she hadn't been clear. "No, I mean, I  _am_ disappointed. Hugely. I let my whole team down, my coach. I feel like a giant failure and a coward for leaving the way I did."

"Paige," Emily said, reaching out her arm so she could pull her girlfriend into her chest and comfort her.

"I'm not upset about it in the sense that I realized it wasn't what I wanted to do as a career, but I wish I could've finished out the season at least," Paige shrugged in Emily's arms.

"I'm so sorry, baby," Emily soothed.

"It's okay, Em," Paige told her. " _That_  disappointment I can live with. But I wouldn't have been able to deal with not being here for my grandma when she needed me. My head would have been completely fucked up over it. My times probably would've sucked anyway if I stayed."

"You're the sweetest person I've ever known," Emily whispered, kissing Paige's forehead as she understood a little more why Paige had done what she did.

"So you weren't just interested in me because I was a super sexy Stanford athlete?" Paige asked.

"I'm not going to lie, it was bit of a turn on for me," Emily admitted. "But your heart is what I fell in love with."

Paige smiled against Emily's chest, snuggling into her girlfriend's embrace. "I was thinking I might get certified this summer and teach some swimming classes for little kids. I might be good at it."

"I think you'd be great at it, babe," Emily told her, glad to hear she wanted to keep swimming in some way, even if it wasn't competitively because from the brief time she had spent in the pool with Paige, just watching her swim, Emily knew that Paige belonged in the water one way or another.

* * *

In no time at all, it seemed, Emily and Paige were standing just outside the door on the front stoop, Paige looking like she was about to either cry or yell at the prospect of Emily, Tuck and the girls leaving in just a few minutes.

"Hey, it's okay. If my parents are alright with it, we'll see each other in a month for Christmas," Emily said gripping Paige tightly by the front of her button down, trying to get her girlfriend's eyes to meet her own.

"I know," Paige replied quietly, gritting her teeth. "I'm just going to miss you. I always miss you. And the girls. I miss them, too, but you know…"

"They will be very pleased when I tell them you said that," Emily smiled. "They all really love you."

"I'm not going to miss Tuck, though," Paige said grinning. "Tell him I said that. I can't  _wait_  to be rid of him."

"I will be sure to tell him that," Emily said with a very serious face. She gave Paige a little wink, though, when the other girl started to look slightly worried. "I know you secretly miss Tuck even more than you miss me."

"I don't know if I'd go that far…okay, yeah, I do. But only cuz he's been my brother for like 21 years and you've only been my girl for like 2 months," Paige grinned. "I'm afraid he'll always have the upper hand on you, Em."

Emily stuck her bottom lip out in a very pronounced pout that had Paige laughing loudly and swooping in to capture that lip between her own. She sucked on it until Emily moaned and began returning the kiss, wrapping her arms tightly around Paige's neck. She really didn't want to leave and go back to Illinois, the land of homework and no-sex.

"We really need to get going, Em!" Eden shouted over at her from the open door of the car that was sitting in the driveway.

"We all voted, by the way, and you're driving," Charlie informed Emily.

Emily wasn't listening. She was too concentrated on the amazing things Paige's tongue was doing in her mouth.

"I think we might have to physically pry them apart if we want to leave," Jo sighed from where she was leaning against one of the back doors of the car with her arms crossed.

"They're like those sucker fish, you know, that like permanently suction cup their mouths against the glass and all day long they just slide their way around the tank," Charlie mused.

Emily heard that. "Okay, that was fucking rude, Charlotte," Emily yelled, pulling away from Paige.

"What? Those are my favorite kind of fish!" Charlie retorted. "But they are kind of gross."

"She's gonna punch you when she finally gets in the car," Jo warned Charlie.

"Yeah, SUCKER PUNCH!" Charlie hooted, completely pleased with herself at thinking up such a clever remark.

"That was quite good, actually," Eden agreed. "Well done, darling," she congratulated her girlfriend.

"Emily," Tuck said from where he was squatting over an old tree stump in the front yard. He was giving her a sympathetic smile that told Emily that he didn't want to leave either, but they did need to go now.

Emily turned back to Paige. "I gotta go," she said.

"I know," Paige smiled, placing one last gentle kiss on Emily's lips. "I love you."

"I love you, too." Emily knew that if she didn't go get into the car right then that she never would, so she tore herself away from Paige like a bandage off a wound and hurried down to the car where Jo handed her the keys.

Tuck trotted back up to the front stoop again and gave his sister a quick peck on the forehead. "You better set that twin bed back up in the TV room, cuz you know I'm going to stay with you and Grandma like every night I'm home," he grinned.

"I'll see if I can find your old cowboy sheets," Paige teased, shoving Tuck lightly on the back of his head as he turned to leave. "See you next week!"

"Tell Dad I want to carve the turkey this year!" Tuck said over his shoulder, climbing into the backseat beside Jo and Charlie.

"He's never gonna let you!" Paige replied just before he shut the door.

Emily rolled down her window just as Eden started playing  _Video Killed the Radio Star_ and made a show of putting on her sunglasses as she looked up at Paige, who couldn't help but laugh at how incredibly "cool" Emily and her friends were.

"Later, McCullers," Emily said casually, giving Paige a head nod.

"Peace out, Fields. Your crew rides way too hard for me," Paige replied biting her lip as everyone started singing along at the top of their lungs to the chorus.

"You know it," Emily smiled, then backed slowly out of the driveway, pulled out into the street, and drove out of sight.

Standing on the stoop alone now, Paige would have given anything to be in the car with them as she watched them disappear.

* * *

Emily waited until she had pulled onto the highway before she turned the music from Eden's iPod down on the new speakers she'd bought (and thank god she had, because Emily didn't think she could make it another 14 hours with only  _Tangled Up in Blue_ to listen to) she could address the car. She definitely had a conversation topic in mind and it was just the thing to take her mind off of the fact that she was putting more and more miles between herself and Paige with every minute that went by.

"Jo—" was all she got out, however, before Jo interrupted her.

"Do we really have to do this? Can't this just be a crazy older-nurse thing that happened once when we were Philly? We'll all look back and laugh at it!" she pleaded. "We don't actually have to talk about it."

"Nuh-uh," Tuck tutted, wagging a finger in Jo's red face. "I want the details! All the juicy, lesbian details!"

"She's hardly OLDER," Charlie scoffed, throwing up air quotes around the term. "I mean, she's like, what 26, 27? 5 years is NOTHING. I mean, when I was 18—"

Emily could see Eden's face contorting in anger as Charlie began talking about one of her past dalliances. She looked like steam was about to come pouring out of her ears at any moment.

"Abort, Charlie, abort!" Emily muttered, reaching back over the console to smack Charlotte in the shin.

"Uh…I mean…when I was 18, I was an innocent angel who didn't even knoooooow what sex was," Charlie said, changing gears quickly at Emily's warning. Although Charlie adored jealous Eden, she didn't think that the others would appreciate witnessing just  _why_ she adored jealous Eden. Especially in such close confines.

Eden spun around in the passenger seat and met Charlie's eyes with a steely look. "Rest stop," was all she said.

Charlie just gulped and nodded her head emphatically.

"See why do we ever need to talk about me when we always have the Eden and Charlie show to entertain us?" Jo questioned, sweeping her arm out toward the two.

"Because, we care about your sex life, too, Josephine," Emily stated. "Isn't that right, everyone?"

Everyone gave added their own brand of agreement here, Charlie rubbing the shaved portion of Jo's head affectionately and saying in what she felt was a very sensual voice, "I care so much about your sex life, baby."

Jo just rolled her eyes, but allowed the head rubbing to continue. "Well, we definitely didn't have sex, so, we can move on."

"You know what I meant!" Emily huffed. "Just because Eden and Charlie parade it around in front of us all the time doesn't mean we don't want to know what's going on in your love…I mean….romantic…life?"

"That's right, Jo," Eden assented. "I can't help that I'm so dramatic! And, let's be real, Charlotte is an attention whore. But just because we hog the spotlight most of the time, that doesn't mean we aren't very invested in all of your lives as well."

Charlie had actually unbuckled her seatbelt and had now climbed onto Jo's lap, who was holding her as if it was the most natural thing in the world, and was braiding the longer side of Jo's hair now. "Come on Jo Jo, tell us about Adrienne. Please?" she asked.

"There's not really much to tell, you guys," Jo said simply.

"Well, what exactly happened at the hospital?" Tuck prompted.

"After everybody went off to do their own thing, we just got to talking. She was telling me about her job and I mentioned that my mom, you know, was a nurse when she was alive…and Adrienne asked me if I wanted to go for a walk around the hospital. So we did. She was just really easy to talk to. She made me laugh, I guess," Jo finished, feeling rather lame.

"Okay, so what about the kissing?" Eden, who was now braiding small chunks of Charlie's hair as Charlie continued with Jo's, asked, nodding encouragingly.

"Right," Jo said, trying to find the words and keep a lid on her mounting embarrassment. "When we were walking around, we went by the chapel and she asked if I wanted to see it. So I said sure and we went in and she sort of was looking at me, you know, like ya do, and she said she liked my jacket and ran her hands along the collar and then she just leaned in and kissed me."

"Did you kiss her back?" Tuck asked.

"Yeah. She's super hot," Jo deadpanned.

"That's great," Emily said, her eyes firmly on the road. "So…do you  _like_  her or was it just a physical thing? Are you going to call each other or something?"

"I don't want to knock long-distance relationships or anything, Em, since you are currently in the middle of one, but…that's not what I want at all. And okay…5 years isn't  _that_ much, but…I just think that there's definitely not enough  _whatever_ there to make all  _that_  worth it. "

"You don't like each other enough to work through the distance and age gap?" Eden surmised redundantly.

"Yeah, exactly," Jo agreed.

"Still, you got to make out with someone!" Charlie said. "That's never a bad thing."

"That's sometimes a bad thing," Eden chimed in.

"True," Tuck said. "In high school, my boyfriend's parents caught us making out before he came out to them. That was definitely a bad thing."

"Well, Jo and Adrienne making out wasn't a bad thing," Emily said. "I mean, you got the good make-out vibes and now I don't feel like I have to worry about her snaking my girl anymore."

"Glad I could help," Jo replied chuckling slightly. "And from what I could tell Adrienne definitely feels more big-sisterly toward Paige."

"Okay, bitch better back off  _my_  territory then!" Tuck shouted.

"Alright, alright," Jo said, putting a pacifying hand on Tuck's chest as he leaned forward, gesticulating wildly. "No one is stealing your sister, Theodore. Why don't we talk about something else now?"

"Oh! Can we  _please_  start planning our monologues for the Repertory auditions?!" Eden shrieked. "I want to make sure that none of us are doing the same one."

"Like that would ever happen, but sure let's do it," Jo answered.

As everyone else began to discuss the monologues they were thinking of preparing, Emily let herself focus fully on the road ahead of her. This conversation didn't really concern her. Once every three years, Vallance's Theatre Department did what they called Repertory Term. It was an immersive 10-week trimester that theatre majors could participate in as preparation for what they could expect in a real theatre company. The students put on two entire shows; one that they were required to act in, even if it was a one-line part, and the other they had to do some sort of crew work on. They also had to take two theatre classes while working on the shows. Emily had heard some real horror stories about the experience from some of the older students she'd worked with over her three years in the Scene Shop, so she was relieved that she wouldn't be participating. Tuck, Eden, Charlie, and Jo were all enrolled in it however. It was a bit of a rite of passage among the theatre majors and although it wouldn't undoubtedly be difficult, they were all pretty excited to do it, especially since they found out the professors running Repertory Term had chose both parts of  _Angels in America_  as the shows they would be putting on. Unfortunately, with it being so time consuming, Emily didn't she'd be seeing much of her friends. She was trying not to think about that, though.

Instead, Emily let her mind wander in and out of the conversation as she drove, already daydreaming about Christmas and what she and Paige would do together. Snowball fights, baking pies, snuggling while drinking hot chocolate, sex under the tree…the possibilities were endless. She couldn't wait.

* * *

They arrived back at Vallance late. It was nearly 3 am. Everyone was half asleep and dead on their feet after the long drive. Tuck couldn't manage much more than a mumbled "See you guys soon," as the girls all pulled their bags out of the trunk and trudged into The Log. Emily, though she desperately wanted to collapse into bed as soon as possible, stood in the open doorway to the house and watched Tuck drive off down the street. She was nervous about him being so sleepy and driving now that he was alone in the car, and she begrudgingly closed the front door when she couldn't see the taillights of the car anymore, her face creased in worry.

"He's only going like 5 blocks, Em," Eden reasoned as she and Charlie headed up the stairs dragging their bags behind them.

"Yeah, he'll be fine. Put your worry face away," Jo yawned from the couch where she had collapsed and stretched out with a satisfied grin on her face. She toed her boots off with her eyes closed and nestled one arm behind her head.

"Aren't you going upstairs?" Emily asked her, the sound of a bedroom door closing in the hallway upstairs as she asked.

"I'm worried I'll oversleep and miss my first class if I go get in bed," Jo mumbled. "It's too comfortable."

Emily moved into the living room and grabbed the large, cream-colored blanket from the opposite end of the couch and moved to cover her friend with it. Jo was already snoring lightly as Emily draped the fuzzy blanket over her. After setting three alarms on Jo's phone and setting it just out of the girl's reach on the coffee table, Emily's new typewriter caught her eye.

It was still sitting right where she'd opened it three days ago, the poem she'd typed out from memory wrapped around the roller, waiting for her to either free it or continue on. She pulled the paper slowly out of the machine's grasp and read it over as she moved across to where the lamp was casting a warm glow around the room. She clicked the light off and, in the dark, folded the poem up and slipped it into the pocket of her jacket before bending down to retrieve her own bag from the floor by the doorway.

Emily loved to move through the house when it was like this: pitch black and silent. She loved that she could move so surely, aware of where every object and piece of furniture sat. She imagined it was how blood felt in the veins, how electricity coursed ceaselessly as it whizzed through the power lines overhead, or how geese moved so fluidly in their V without need for conversation; she was confident in her place, her home, and the world around her as she navigated the night house. She moved around the dining room, sidestepping away from the chair Charlie never bothered to push in, weaving around the bathroom door that wouldn't stay shut unless it was locked from the inside. She pushed back Eden's box of granola bars that always ended up hanging half off the pantry shelf after she'd grabbed one in a hurry as Emily passed it, and then pulled out a bottle of orange juice from the fridge before heading downstairs, because she knew Jo preferred it at room temperature when the mornings turned cold. As her feet effortlessly found the basement stairs, Emily let her eyes fluttered closed and she imagine that Paige was just behind her on the steps, ready to crawl into bed beside her.

* * *

The next morning, was cold. Illinois had abandoned the crisp autumn Emily had been so thoroughly enjoying and plowed ahead into a wintery cold despite the fact that it was still a week until Thanksgiving. Emily bowed her head and hurriedly wrapped her scarf around her neck and lower face as she closed the front door of The Log behind her and headed for her first class. Truth be told, Emily wasn't much looking forward to winter term. She knew that with Repertory Term happening, Tuck, Eden, Jo, and Charlie were all going to be much busier than normal and she would be the odd woman out. They would all be busy memorizing lines and building sets while she was writing poetry and learning about the first wave Feminist Movement in her Gender and Women Studies class in which she had enrolled. Neither of these things were at all displeasing to her, but Emily had a sinking feeling that she would be living a rather lonely three months come January.

She had just enough time to stop by and grab her mail before she went to her last Film class of the term, and she was dying to get out of the cold for a few minutes, so she ducked into the student union and hurried down the steps to the mailroom. When she opened her box, Emily discovered she had a few birthday cards from her relatives and a couple flyers from the school reminding students of Midnight Breakfast and an ice cream social Vallance always held during finals each term in an effort to make sure students didn't collapse from the stress of studying, taking tests, and writing papers. In the middle of the stack was a plain white envelope with the Vallance crest in the corner. It was all too familiar to Emily and it made her heart drop into her stomach, dread immediately washing over her.

"Not again," Emily whispered, anxiety coiling in the pit of her stomach. She almost didn't even open the envelope. She knew it would be Vallance demanding more money from her that she didn't have to give them. She'd managed get a few more scholarships and loans over the last year in order to keep her tuition paid, but she was running out of options. And with the excitement of seeing of Paige and worry about how her girl was doing over the past couple of months, she'd fallen behind on her latest search for scholarships and figuring out where she could possibly apply for  _another_ loan. She felt like she'd only managed to keep herself in school thus far by sheer luck. With all the willpower she could muster, Emily opened to the envelope and read the letter so she could be sure what she was dealing with. The business office was informing her that they needed to receive her payment of $3,000 no later than January 9th if she wanted to attend classes next trimester.

"Fuck," Emily said, letting her head fall forward onto the mailboxes in front of her. It wasn't  _that_ much money as far as tuitions go, but it was  _a lot_ to Emily, who had exactly $54.79 in her bank account. She couldn't worry about this now, though. Right now, she had to go to class and then she had to worry about finals and writing papers before she could go to Texas for Thanksgiving. Once she was in Texas she would start trying to sort this mess out.

"Hey, Emily, are you okay?" a sweet, concern laden voice interrupted her building panic.

Emily stood up straight again and snapped her head around to see who the intruder was that had just come around the corner and spotted her having a minor meltdown.

"Oh, uh, hey Liz," Emily said, taking in the girl that Jo had taken to working on props with recently. The girl who, according to Jo, had an enormous crush on her. She hated getting cornered like this because she hated being mean to people or brushing them off. And really, Liz was a sweet girl. Emily just didn't have any interest in her as well,  _anything_. She immediately felt guilty that she didn't even care to have Liz as a friend, but she was feeling extremely overwhelmed at the moment.

"Are you okay?" Liz asked again.

"Yeah, I'm great!" Emily responded a bit too enthusiastically.

Liz just gave her a look that clearly communicated that she had just seen her collapsed against the mailboxes and believed exactly zero of the words that Emily had just told her.

"Just a little stressed with finals and all. You know how it is," Emily tried again, noticing that Liz seemed a lot less eager than she had during their run in when Emily had been looking for Jo in the props closet. Maybe Jo explained to her about Paige, Emily thought. She hoped so.

"Yeah I feel you there," she replied. "Jo and I are getting together tonight to work on some lighting design stuff. I'm totally freaking about our presentation."

"Oh really?" Emily said, her eyebrows creased. Jo hadn't mentioned she was working on a presentation with Liz. "She didn't uh, mention that."

"Did you guys have fun in Philly this weekend?" Liz asked excitedly.

Emily's eyes almost popped out of her head. How the hell did Liz know that they'd been in Philly all weekend? This must have been very obvious on her face because Liz laughed.

"Sorry! Jo's just been really excited about surprising you. She was gushing about it for the past two weeks like nonstop," Liz revealed, laughing lightly again. "She adores you guys, you know. You and Eden and Charlie."

"We adore her," Emily said, smiling broadly, but still slightly thrown. It was unclear just how she could have missed this new friendship with this person that Jo was  _gushing to?_ That word wasn't a verb Emily would normally have used for Jo. They'd practically had to  _pry_ information out of her about Adrienne yesterday in the car just yesterday. Emily quickly decided to bluff a little and see what she could get out of Liz. "You two have been spending a lot of time together lately, huh?"

Liz blushed slightly and gave her a cross between a shrug and a nod. "Yeah, I guess we have. I was bummed she had to miss our breakfast this morning though. She texted me at like 2:30 this morning to tell me ya'll were back, so I can't really blame her. She must be exhausted. And we've got plans tonight, anyway, so…"

Liz was not proving to be a hard nut to crack. She also seemed to know a lot more about Emily than Emily knew about her, so she didn't exactly feel bad about what she did next, although she was sure Jo was going to murder her when she found out.

"Why don't you come over to The Log tonight?" Emily asked, smiling warmly now. "I mean, you and Jo were going to work on that presentation anyway. You could have dinner with us and then we were all going to have a study session anyway. You should join us."

Liz looked like Christmas had come early. Her whole face lit up. "I would love that! Are you sure? It wouldn't be any trouble? I know you guys are kind of a tight knit group…"

"Liz, come on, of course. I'd like to get to you better now that you and Jo are…hanging out so much."

Liz just nodded emphatically. "Do you want me to bring anything for dinner?"

"Salad? Or bread? Whatever you want will be fine," Emily threw out as she came up with a menu on the spot. "I'm making pasta!"

"I  _love_ pasta!" Liz replied. Just then the bell rang out across campus signally the start of the class period. "Shoot, I gotta get to class. I'll see you tonight!" Liz spun around quickly and shot out of the mailroom before Emily could say anything else to her.

Well, whatever this secret friendship-maybe-more thing Jo had going with Liz, Emily was going to get to the bottom of it. Especially since Jo had just spent the weekend making out with Adrienne. And maybe it was none of Emily's business, but…come on, it totally was! Emily reasoned as she headed to class. Jo was one of her best friends and she was apparently telling this Liz all about her and Eden and Charlie and how much she adored them while simultaneously telling the three of them nothing about Liz. Yeah, Jo was most definitely going to kill her.


	48. Confessions and Conversations

Paige held the pill bottle up to her face and squinted at the label. This one was three times a day. She squeezed the lid to disengage the childproof lock and twisted the cap off, then pulled the three weekly pill organizers forward and began placing a capsule into each of the tiny boxes.

"I can't imagine having to take so many pills every day," Paige mused out loud.

Hazel was pulled up in her wheelchair across from her at the table in the breakfast room with a mirror propped up in front of her while she did her hair. After Emily, Tuck, and the girls had left yesterday afternoon, Paige had gone to the hospital. Her parents had met her there and the three of them had finally been able to bring Hazel home. After a nice family dinner, Nick and Anne had gone back to their house, and it was just the two of them.

This morning had been Paige's first go at solo care giving and she hadn't done too shabby, she thought. After going downstairs and finding her grandma was awake and reading a book propped up in her bed, Paige had listened while Hazel told her what she wanted to wear. The girl had gathered the items, bringing them over to where her grandmother was sitting on the edge of the bed. Since Hazel could put a bit of weight on her leg now, Paige left the room and she was able to get herself dressed. Then they had breakfast together. After that they'd done some various bathroom things like tooth brushing and face washing, which Hazel didn't need too much help with, besides Paige having to grab things that were out of her reach. The doctors had recommended they buy one of the raised toilet seats that sit above the actual toilet so that Hazel could more easily move herself between her wheelchair and the toilet. Paige was thankful that her grandma could still do these types of things on her own. She wanted to help Hazel, but she didn't want the woman to feel humiliated or useless. Paige was beginning to see that there was a fine line between pride and dignity and she was determined to make sure she was careful to only help when Hazel really needed it and be patient when the woman simply needed some extra time to do something by herself. It was difficult, though, and this was only their first day.

Paige had been relieved to hear that elderly people did not shower every day and that Hazel didn't need to take one that morning. She was very nervous about her helping her grandma into the shower and the possibility of her falling. Plus, there was the issue of dignity once again, and Paige wasn't sure how that was all going to go. She was more than happy to put it off figuring it out for another day or two.

Now they were having pill time as Paige tried to sort through the various medicines the doctor had prescribed and Hazel was fixing her white hair with a small comb and a brush that looked like she had probably bought it in the 70s.

"If you're lucky, you'll have to at some point," Hazel said, chuckling and setting her brush and comb down.

"Why would I be lucky to have to take this many pills?" Paige asked, her eyes scanning around at the various bottles that surrounded her at the table.

"Because it'll mean you're old," Hazel laughed, "and still kickin'!"

"Okay, you have a point there," Paige grinned. "It's still hard to imagine, though. What's it like being old anyway?"

Hazel leaned her head back and considered the question carefully before answering her granddaughter. "Hmm," she hummed lightly. "It's like sitting down at the dinner table, with all the people you love, and all your favorite foods. You eat until you're stuffed and laugh and talk and have a wonderful time. But then you go to stand up and you realize that maybe you ate a little too much. And you let out that groan. You know the one I'm talking about," Hazel said smiling at Paige as the girl laughed. "You don't feel so good, and you're pants are a little tighter and you're just sort of uncomfortable. But you'd do it all over again! Because it was delicious. Every bite. Getting old is like that. It's hurts, but good. It hurts good."

"You always have the best analogies," Paige said, understanding the exact feeling Hazel was describing.

"Well, I'm very old and very wise," Hazel said, pointing a finger over at Paige. "You should listen to me."

"I do listen to you!" Paige stated, crossing her arms defiantly over her chest. "Always."

"Right now, when you're young, you're still picking out your dinner guests and getting all the lumps out of the mashed potatoes," Hazel explained. "Make sure you don't sit down to eat until you've got it all just how you want it and everybody you want is there."

"That's very good advice," Paige told her, nodding to show she understood before gathering up all the pill bottles and returning them to one of shelves on the desk that stood against the wall.

"What should we do today?" Hazel asked conversationally. Wheeling herself slowly backward in the cramped area between the table and wall behind her. "It's my first day of freedom since Halloween!"

"I wanted to asked you, something, actually," Paige said, rubbing her hands together nervously, her voice slipping into a more serious tone. "I've been giving my future a lot of thought lately. Talking to Emily about some stuff, you know."

Hazel's eyebrows arched curiously as she listened to Paige speak. "Don't tell me you two are engaged already!" she laughed.

"Grandma!" Paige scolded. "Nothing like that. I've just been talking to Emily about what I want to do now that I know I don't want to swim professionally."

"Ah, well," Hazel said, sounding slightly disappointed. "Go on."

"Well, as you know, in January I'm going to start classes again, and I've got enough credits from Stanford to finish my business degree by the summer," Paige explained. She had never really figured out what she wanted to do, besides swimming, when she was at Stanford, so she'd just decided to get a Business degree and hope for the best. "But next fall, I think I want to go to culinary school…"

Paige grimaced, her stomach was a mess of nerves as she confessed her desire to her grandma. So far, she hadn't spoken to anyone other than Emily about what she was feeling like she wanted to do, but she had realized over the past few months that she was happiest when she was cooking, baking, and feeding people. It had seemed like such a stupid idea at first, not something Paige had ever considered doing as a career before, but she couldn't shake the thoughts from her head. It was only after Emily had told her how incredibly sexy she thought Paige would look in a chef's jacket that she let herself fully embrace the fantasy. Now, her forehead creased in worry, Paige surveyed Hazel's face as she let her in on the fledgling plan.

"Oh, dearheart, that's wonderful!" Hazel shouted, reaching her hands out to Paige to show her that she should come over and hug her. Paige rushed around the table and practically dove into her grandma's embrace where she stayed for a few long moments despite the awkward angle she was bent over at to reach the old woman in the wheelchair.

"You don't think it's a crazy idea?" Paige asked, finally straightening up.

"It's a little unexpected," Hazel admitted. "You've always been a good cook. Though, I can't say you've ever expressed any interest in it as a career. But sweetheart, you've always been able to pick up the things I taught you in the kitchen. You'd make a great chef! Especially if you're heart is in it."

"I'm kind of scared to try it, but I really think it is," Paige said quietly. "I just feel so happy when I'm cooking."

"Paige, this is wonderful. I'm so happy you've decided what you want to do," Hazel remarked. "Have you told your parents yet?"

"No, I haven't," Paige divulged. "I'm still getting used to saying it out loud. You're the only person I've told besides Emily."

"It's been a big year for you," Hazel said, her eyes twinkling. "I'm glad I was here for it."

"Me, too," Paige replied, beaming at her grandma.

"As happy as I am for you, we still don't have anything to do today," Hazel mentioned again, eager to do something fun on her first day out of the hospital.

"Actually," Paige said, "I kind of have a favor to ask."

"Oh?"

"Grandma, you worked in a restaurant," Paige said, stating the obvious.

"That I did," Hazel said. "For 7 years, on and off."

"On and off?" Paige questioned. While she knew that her grandma had worked in a fancy restaurant in downtown Philadelphia called Child's Play, she didn't know any of the details of Hazel's time there.

"I started working there when I was 16, in the summer of 1940," Hazel explained. "But I started as a waitress. I never had any formal cooking training and to be honest, women were not chefs back then. Well, they liked me there, thought I did good work, so they hired me back the next summer and after I talked with my folks, they decided to let me stay on there when I started my senior year and work after school and weekends. Well, that December Pearl Harbor was bombed, of course, and we entered the war and the draft started. It was in February, if I'm not mistaken, that one of the sous chefs was drafted and left Chef Curry— that was the head chef's name Victor Curry—in the lurch. Now, how I'd gotten the job in the first place was that my daddy was friends with Chef Curry. He was a frequent customer at our store, Allen's Drugs. I've told you about that." Paige nodded, remembering that her grandma's maiden name was indeed Allen, and that her parents had owned a drug store long ago. "So, when I went in to the restaurant that afternoon and found out what had happened, I offered Chef Curry my services in the kitchen. I had enough experience chopping vegetables and cooking at home with Mother and I knew it would be easier for him to call in one of the other girls to take my place waitressing than it would be for him to find someone to work the line. So many of the boys had enlisted or were being drafted, you know. After that night, I never worked another waitressing shift! Chef Curry took me under his wing and taught me  _most_ of what he knew," Hazel finished chuckling. "I think he may have held back a few things, just so I wouldn't steal his job."

"You didn't stay, though, because Grandpa Frank was drafted, wasn't he?" Paige asked.

"Well, he wasn't drafted until later, 19 months before the war ended to be precise. But we were already dating at that point and soon after I graduated that spring, he decided to move to California, where he took a course on aircraft mechanics and then took a job at Consolidated Aircraft Supply. I stayed at home, here in Philadelphia, with my folks and continued on at the restaurant until he'd saved enough money to buy me a train ticket to California. As soon as I got there, we were married that very afternoon and we didn't move back home until he was drafted a year later."

"Wow," Paige said. She loved to hear about her grandparents' lives and what they did during the war. She found it all so romantic and interesting. "You and Grandpa had such a cool love story. So, Chef Curry hired you back, then? When you moved back here?"

"That he did," Hazel confirmed. "Then I had to quit again a few years later when I got pregnant with the boys and got busy raising them. I would go back and work a few months every now and then because I missed it so much, after the boys were in school, of course. Chef Curry always welcomed me back with open arms. Eventually he retired, however, and I didn't want to impose on the new head chef. I added it all up once, and it came out to about 7 years I worked there. On and off."

"Okay, so that leads me back to my original question," Paige said, "which I never actually asked…okay. Will you teach me…everything you know?"

Hazel chuckled appreciatively. "That would take over 80 years, dear. I'm not sure I have that much time left."

Paige huffed. "You know what I mean. Cooking stuff. Not like, EVERYTHING."

"That'll still take a few years," Hazel told Paige, rolling her wheelchair slowly into the hallway. "So we better get started!"

* * *

As Emily sat in her last Film Class of the term, Tuck nodding off in the desk just to her right, she felt her phone buzz in her pocket. Professor Anderson was not one to be trifled with, however. Emily didn't dare pull her phone to check the message that just came in. She was having enough trouble covertly shaking Tuck every 10 minutes or so, making sure that he didn't fall asleep. He was exhausted, having driven the last 2 hours of the trip while the girls had all dozed, though they had tried to stay awake with him. Emily felt that it was definitely her duty to make sure he didn't get caught sleeping in class, so she waited until Professor Anderson turned around to write the requirements of their final paper on the board and then Emily shot her hand out and shook Tuck gently by the upper arm until his eyes snapped open more fully.

 _Half an hour,_ she mouthed to Tuck, who sighed deeply while looking up at the clock and then started to copy out the paper requirements into his notebook, shaking his head slightly every once in a while in an effort to keep himself alert.

Emily started to do the same thing, writing quickly in her own notebook and then she felt another text message come in. And then another. And another. Emily cringed slightly, sure that the texts were from Jo and that she had learned of Emily's invitation for Liz to join them at the house for dinner. Jo wasn't someone who ever got outright mad. It was more of a deep irritation that she usually expressed in biting sarcasm. She kept her emotions in check and close to her chest most of the time.

This was most likely Jo in panic mode, Emily realized. It was something she'd only been witness to a few times. The first time it had happened was Emily's first glimpse into what Jo kept guarded underneath her carefully composed surface. In their freshman year, Jo had been unable to get a hold of her father for over 24 hours and she had completely lost herself in worry about what might have happened to him. Her imagination had jumped off a cliff of worst-case scenarios and she had called Emily, crying and asking her if she would come over to her dorm room. When Emily got there, Jo had explained to her how her brother had died when she was a kid and her mother had died when she was a teenager. And how she knew, somewhere in the back of her mind that she was being irrational, but that she couldn't help herself. Emily's heart had broken for her. All she could do was sit with her, be there for her. They'd skipped class and stayed in Jo's dorm, watching the daytime talk shows on her TV and eating Poptarts until Jo's dad had finally called in the early evening. He had accidently turned his cell phone off and hadn't realized.

Luckily, Emily didn't have another class for a few hours, so she would have time to talk to Jo and explain  _why_ she had invited Liz over. Lost in her thoughts and guilt over Jo, Emily's vigil over Tuck had slipped from her mind. She looked over at him just has his chin hit his chest.  _Shit,_ Emily thought, her arm shooting out, grabbing his hand tugging on it insistently until his eyes popped open again and he sat bolt upright in his chair, breathing quickly. Emily was staring so intently at him that she didn't realize that Professor Anderson was now watching them, and that she and Tuck now just appeared to be holding hands across the small aisle that separated their desks.

Emily glanced back to the front and saw Professor Anderson squinting at their clasped hands with a sort of superior look on her face. Emily grinned at her guiltily and shrugged. Tuck just sat there, blushing profusely.

"While I do sympathize with the plight of young love," Professor Anderson said haughtily, "I'd appreciate if you two could control yourselves for the next ten minutes until class has ended."

Tuck snatched his hand back from Emily's so quickly it might have been burning him, and mumbled an embarrassed, "Sorry, Professor."

Professor Anderson then looked to Emily expectantly. Emily cleared her throat and then said, "We'll try to keep our hormones in check." Keeping a straight face as Professor Anderson continued to look at her was one of the hardest struggles of Emily's life, especially when she could hear Tuck breath out a nearly silent, "for the love of god," beside her.

"Thank you," Professor Anderson deadpanned, and then resumed the pitch she had been giving them all for her Advanced Film class, which, having completed Intro to Film, they were all eligible to take now.

Finally the bell rang and Emily hurriedly threw her notebook and pen into her messenger bag, then stood and waited impatiently while Tuck rubbed at his eyes and drug himself out of his own desk before tucking his notebook into his backpack. By the time he had finished, most of the class had filed out.

"Tuck,  _come on_ ," Emily huffed.

"It's your fault I'm so tired," he moaned loudly, pulling the straps of his backpack onto his shoulders.

Professor Anderson chuckled from where she was now erasing the board at the front of the classroom, obviously misconstruing what Tuck was insinuating. She turned around and smiled at the pair, much less grumpy now that they weren't interrupting her class. "You two make a cute couple," she observed. "I wondered if you were together, always saving one another's seats."

"Seriously?" Tuck spat, a look of horror on his face.

Emily just grabbed his hand again, though, as he looked at their teacher in shock and said, "Oh, thank you! Sorry again, for earlier, but we really have enjoyed this class a lot. We'll think about taking your Advanced Film course."

"I'd be happy to see you both again if you do decide to take it," Professor Anderson said, waving them out of the room.

They had barely made it out of the classroom, when Emily caught sight of a severely un-amused Jo, clearly waiting for Emily to exit the classroom. She gave them no verbal greeting as Emily, still holding Tuck by the hand, drug them both over to where Jo was standing. The only sign she gave that she had noticed them at all was her one raised eyebrow as she looked down at their joined hands.

"Well, I guess we should just tell you now," Tuck snapped, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "Emily and I are in love and we spent all last night in the throes of passion."

"I am in no mood for whatever the fuck this is," Jo said, a tinge of anxiety present in her voice, waving her hands between Tuck and Emily. "But I'm pretty sure Paige wouldn't approve!"

Tuck stepped back from Jo, sensing something was definitely wrong. With his eyes wide, he glanced over to Emily, hoping she knew what was going on.

"Um, okay," Emily said. "Tuck, uh, Jo and I need to talk about something. Sorry to ditch you for lunch today."

"No worries," Tuck replied carefully, eyeing Jo as she glared at Emily and cracked her knuckles absent-mindedly. "I'll see you both later, yeah?"

"You should come over tonight," Jo snapped suddenly. "Apparently we're having PASTA!"

"Alright, here we go," Emily laughed nervously, dropping Tuck's hand and steering Jo by her shoulders into the a room nearby that was sometimes used for the poetry workshops and recitations that Emily had participated in.

The room was lushly decorated, in deep reds and golds with old oil portraits of people Emily could only assume gave money to or taught at Vallance at some point. This place always reminded Emily of scenes in movies where men sat around at their "clubs" in wingback chairs, smoking cigars and sipping brandy. There were plenty of places to sit, though, and it was empty. That was all that mattered to Emily at the moment as she and Jo entered the room.

"What the fuck, Em?" Jo said, throwing her arms out to either side of her. "Do you hate me now? Did I do something to make you hate me? Is that it?"

"Okay, just calm down," Emily said, turning and flopping down on to one of the two couches in the room. "It's just dinner."

"That's bullshit and you know it!" Jo spat, pacing around in front of the couch Emily was sat on.

"You like her. Don't you?" Emily asked, crossing her arms, and watching as Jo leaned her head back and groaned.

"So you  _are_  doing this to torture me," Jo replied. "Fantastic. Yes. I do like her. But apparently you already knew that."

"Well, yeah, I kind of figured it out when Liz informed me that you've been telling her every detail about me and Charlie and Eden's lives at your secret breakfast rendezvous!"

"So, what? You got mad and decided to rub it in my face by inviting her over?" Jo asked, her voice cracking slightly.

"Why do you suddenly think I'm capable of being a vindictive bitch?" Emily asked, incredulous. "And why would you think that spending time with someone and talking to them would make me mad?"

"Because I don't see any other reason that you would do this!" Jo replied, completely exasperated.

"Why have you been hiding this? What is the big deal, Jo? When have we ever not been supportive of you?" Emily rattled off, her main concern that Jo didn't feel like she could tell her three best friends that she had a crush on Liz.

Jo's face fell in an expression of defeat at Emily's words and she finally stopped pacing and sat herself down on the couch next to her friend.

"Em, what was I supposed to do? Bring her back to The Log to hang out with my three roommates, one of which she has a crush on," Jo said dejectedly, gesturing at Emily, "one of which she's _slept with_  and the other of which would most likely kill her for sleeping with the former. It was too fucking embarrassing to tell you about it. I've just been hoping I would get over it. No dice so far."

Emily sighed, opened her mouth to speak, but then closed it again while she considered what Jo had just told her. "Alright, I'll give you that the Eden and Charlie situation would be…awkward as hell…but Jo, I really don't think Liz has a crush on me any more. And Eden and Charlie  _love you._  If they knew how much you like this girl they would never do anything to make her uncomfortable. At least, not on purpose."

Jo had her head leaned back, staring at the ceiling. She chuckled darkly, thinking of the myriad of ways that Charlie could possibly stick her foot in her mouth. "Why do you think she doesn't have a crush on you anymore?" she finally asked, biting her lower lip nervously.

"Because, Josephine, she wouldn't stop talking about  _you_ this morning in the mail room and she was acting totally smitten at just the mention of your name. Her whole face lit up when she talked about you."

Jo looked over at Emily, her eyes looking both hopeful and disbelieving at the same time. Emily couldn't help herself, she reached out and grabbed both of Jo's hands, just wanting to reassure the girl somehow.

"I don't know, Em. Things like this just don't happen for me. I've never even had a real relationship before. Just random hookups, like with Adrienne. And sometimes they last for a month or two. But none of them ever really  _like me._ "

"I think this time might be different," Emily told her honestly. "Come on, I mean, Paige completely rejected me, told me she wasn't gay the first time I tried to kiss her, and now we're completely in love. Anything is possible."

"Will you talk to Charlie and Eden about it, before she comes over tonight?" Jo pleaded. "I don't think I can handle them, not when I'm already this nervous."

"I will," Emily nodded. "But it's just dinner, you know. You were going to see her tonight anyway. It doesn't have to be some huge thing."

"Yeah, well, it feels like a huge thing," Jo laughed, squeezing Emily's hands and giving her a weak smile. "Thanks."

The two just looked at each other for a moment, Emily trying to silently soothe her anxious friend.

"What about Tuck?" Jo asked after following along with Emily in a few deep breaths in and out. "Should we tell him?"

Emily shrugged. "We don't have to tell Tuck anything until you're ready. I mean, like I said—"

Just then, Jo's gaze shifted over to the doorway, where someone was stopped with a pile of books clutched in their arms.

Emily spun her head around, still holding Jo's hands in her own, to see what she was looking at. It was Professor Anderson, taking in the two girls on the couch with an extremely smug smile on her face. She cleared her throat and strode into the room, towards one of the long tables. "Sorry to interrupt, girls," she said in her forceful tone. "I like to do my grading in here sometimes. It's a nice change of scenery from my office."

"Oh, uh, of course," Emily said, biting her cheek to stop herself from laughing. She couldn't help but feel immensely amused at what this probably looked like to her teacher. "We were just leaving anyway."

Releasing each other's hands, Jo and Emily stood up together and headed towards the door. Professor Anderson had settled herself in of the chairs at the table with a pair of glasses perched at the end of her nose, surveying the two as they made to leave. "Miss Fields," she spoke, smirking and making Emily pause. "You're secret is safe with me."

Emily's face broke into a giant smile. "Thanks, Professor," she choked out. Then she grabbed the thoroughly confused Jo's hand once again, and tugged them both out of sight.


	49. Lizzie, Christina, and Carmen

"So, do you miss me yet?" Paige asked, when she picked up the phone.

"I missed you the second we drove away yesterday," Emily replied.

"Do you think we're that couple that everyone else hates? Because we're so sappy?"

"Probably," Emily laughed. "But I don't really care. They're all just jealous of us."

"How was your last film class?" Paige asked, as Emily had texted her that morning when she got up about what she was doing that day.

"Oh it was fantastic!" Emily gushed. "My professor now thinks that I'm dating Tuck and that I'm also cheating on him with Jo."

"You sound so pleased with yourself," Paige chuckled, "that I'm not even going to ask."

"Yeah you probably shouldn't," Emily sighed. "This morning was ridiculous. But enough about me. What are you and Grandma Hazel up to?"

"Well, I told her about culinary school," Paige revealed, "and she's totally on board. Now we're at a restaurant supply store and she is currently haggling with the owner over the price of one of those Kitchen-Aid mixers. I told her it was way too expensive, but she said that I deserved it and that I should just stop arguing with her because she is way more stubborn than I am."

"Baby, that's amazing! Those mixers are like, what all the professionals use. I see them all the time on Food Network. What color are you getting?" Emily asked.

"I know, I'm so excited!" Paige gushed. "I picked out a blue one, cuz, you know, it reminded me of the water. Wait…since when do you watch Food Network?"

"Since you told me how much you love watching it."

"We are definitely that couple that everyone hates," Paige said, smiling broadly at Emily's sentiment. "Can we Skype tonight?"

"Ehhh," Emily grimaced. "I kind of have a situation I have to deal with tonight and I also have to start writing this 10 page analysis of…a movie I haven't even picked out yet. Can we do tomorrow instead? I'll probably have a nice long story by then to tell you about what happens at dinner tonight."

Paige sighed dramatically. "I  _guess_ ," she groaned. "Text me, at least?"

"Of course," Emily replied sweetly, in a tone she reserved just for Paige. "Have fun with your new mixer, baby. I can't wait to see you in action with it. I love you."

"I love you, too, Emily," Paige responded before hanging up, thinking that Christmas couldn't possibly get there fast enough.

* * *

It was late afternoon now, and Emily hung up the phone just as she rounded the corner and The Log came in to view. She was pretty sure that Eden and Charlie would be home, as it was the last day of classes, and all theatre activity had come to a halt until next term so that students could focus on their finals. Emily hurried towards the house. She needed to get this conversation over with so that she could drag both of them to town with her, buy the food they would need for dinner, and then get home in time to cook it.

As soon as she was inside, Emily threw her bag on the sectional, peeled off her coat, scarf, and gloves and cocked her head into the air, listening for any of her roommates. It only took her a few seconds to hear the muffled banging noises echoing from upstairs. She knew, as she walked up the stairs, that Eden and Charlie were going to kill her for interrupting them, but Emily just didn't have time to care. She could buy them the Lesbian Kama Sutra or something later to make up for it.

Emily banged loudly on Charlie's door and waited for the inevitable blow back, which didn't take long.

"Seriously?" Came Charlie's voice from behind the door. "We're busy! Come back later."

Emily simply continued to knock on the door. She could hear Eden saying something to Charlie but couldn't quite make out what it was.

"Which one of you is it?" Eden said finally. "No, wait! Knock again and let me guess."

Emily smiled and chuckled silently and knocked again three times.

"That's totally Jo," Charlie said.

"Nope, it's Em. Jo wouldn't even dare knock if she knew we were having sex! It's definitely Emily," Eden responded.

"Um, guys?" Emily said.

"I knew it!" Eden chirped happily. "Hey, Em! Can you come back later?"

"You know, maybe  _you_ got to have sex all weekend," Charlie said angrily, "but the rest of us didn't. So go away! Now."

In truth, Emily felt very guilty for what she was about to do, but this was for Jo, who never really asked anything of them and who was so nervous about having Liz over that Emily was worried she might not even come home that night. She had to talk to them now and then she needed their help making dinner. They only had a couple of hours. Emily gritted her teeth, took a deep breath, and then, she said it.

"Palm tree," she spoke the words loud and clear, and then she waited.

It was something that the four of them had come up with in the winter of their freshman year, when they had spent nearly every weekend going out to various parties on campus, finding themselves in peoples' apartments they didn't even know, and drinking more than they probably should have. "Palm tree," was their safe word, their code word. It had an accompanying hand signal that went with it, as well, for times when they weren't near enough to speak or when there was deafeningly loud music playing; it mostly looked like a failure at waving, but was meant to be a palm tree swaying gently in the wind. When one of them said it, or did the wave, the other three would come to their rescue—get them away from a handsy guy or girl they didn't want to be dancing with, take them home because the room had started to spin, help them find the nearest bathroom. Whatever the situation was, they showed up. "Palm tree" was utter seriousness.

The moment she'd said it, she heard scuffling noises begin to happen behind the door and only moments later, Eden flung open the door dressed in only some sweatpants and a sports bra that was on inside out.

"Are you okay?" Eden asked in a worried tone.

"If she's not bleeding, push her down the stairs," Charlie huffed from where she was propped up on the bed with the sheet and blanket wrapped around her.

"Look, I'm sorry, okay? But this really can't wait," Emily said, walking into the room and joining Charlie, who looked extremely annoyed, on the bed. "I'm just going to get this all out at once so you'll both stop glaring at me. So I ran into theatre Liz this morning in the mail room and she started talking to me like she knew my life inside and out and apparently she and Jo are secret friends and they meet up all the time to eat things and do lighting projects and—"

"Yeah, they eat breakfast together nearly every day," Charlie mumbled, looking slightly bored. "What else is new?"

Emily stared at her in disbelief. "How did you know that?"

"How did you  _not_  notice that Jo's never around for breakfast anymore? And she's got a giant crush on her, too, right?" Charlie added.

"Yeah. Did Jo tell you?" Emily asked again, flabbergasted.

"No. I could just tell. She's been more smiley and she's been washing her clothes more often."

"Okay, Sherlock," Emily said, crossing her arms over her chest and setting mouth in a firm line. "What am I going to say next?"

Charlie looked over at Emily finally, and rolled her eyes. "Well…since you're just now finding out about all of this and now you've busted in on our sweet love making," Eden sighed loudly as Charlie said this, "and you just said you ran into Liz in the mail room…you probably invited her over here or something stupid like that."

"Well…I…but," Emily stuttered indignantly. "It wasn't stupid! Why would it be stupid to invite her over?"

"Because she's slept with my girlfriend, MULTIPLE TIMES, and I will end her if I have to!" Eden yelled, seething. "How dare you invite someone over here who has dared to sleep with MY CHARLOTTE!"

Charlie just gestured toward her incensed girlfriend, as if to say,  _my point exactly._

"Okay, no, stop that right now!" Emily started. "This is exactly why I came to talk to you two. Jo really, really likes this girl, Eden, and she is  _so nervous_ to have her over to the house for this exact reason! You and Charlie weren't even together when she and Liz…you know."

"Charlotte and I have always belonged to each other, since the beginning of time," Eden stated firmly, smacking a hand over Charlie's mouth when she tried piped in with "That's not what you said when—"

"Don't you want Jo to have this…ridiculous love bullshit that the three of us have?" Emily implored her friends.

Eden's eyes softened completely as she stared down at Charlie, who was winking at her even though Eden's hand was still clamped over her mouth. After a deep sigh, she pulled her hand back.

"You know I've been in love with you since the day we met, Edie," Charlie said sweetly, not seeming to care that Emily was in the room any more, because she sat up and started playing with the thick tendrils that had come loose from where Eden had tied her hair back. "I only slept with her to make you jealous because I was so mad at you."

Suddenly, Emily felt much more like an intruder than she had when she had knowingly interrupted their sex session. She only got to glimpse this side of her friends' relationship every once in awhile and it always humbled Emily how deeply they obviously felt for one another. They had told her bits and pieces of what had happened between them over the years, and Emily had been around, of course, but it still caught her off guard just how different Eden and Charlie seemed in these intimate moments. Emily stared diligently at the floor, trying to give her friends some privacy, until Eden spoke again.

"Okay! You're both right, I know. I will behave myself," Eden said, then her eyes flared again as she looked directly at Emily. "But I swear to God, Emily Fields, if you ever interrupt my impending orgasm again, you will live to regret it."

"Understood," Emily whispered, balking under Eden's gaze.

"We have to go to the store, don't we? And then help you make dinner?" Charlie asked, flopping back down on to her mattress.

"Please?" Emily asked, grimacing.

Charlie sighed and held her arms out to the sides dramatically. "Eden, dress me," she commanded.

"Dress your own skinny ass, Charlotte," Eden replied and followed Emily out of the room.

"I thought you loved me!" Charlie yelled after her.

* * *

An hour or so later, after a quick trip to the store, Emily, Eden, and Charlie were all busy making dinner, which was going to be the only pasta dish that Emily knew how to cook proficiently.

The process wasn't difficult, but it did take a little time, so Emily was happy to have help. Charlie was making the salad while Eden opened up some cans of olives and tomatoes and roasted some pine nuts. They were just discussing why on earth pine nuts were so expensive, when they heard the front door open and close. All three of them froze.

"It's just me," Jo said walking into the kitchen, noticing the sudden lack of noise and movement that had ensued when she entered the house. "Liz just sent me a text and said she'll be here at 7. She's like, _really_  excited. I don't know why, though. She knows all of you already."

"Yeah, but now she wants to date you and love you so she knows she has to get our approval," Charlie teased.

"Shut up, Charlotte," Jo snapped, running her hands slowly over her face. "I feel like I'm going to throw up."

"How about you…don't do that," Eden said, pulling the toasted pine nuts off the stove and turning around to face Jo.

Jo did, in fact, look a little green, but she also looked extremely worried as she met Eden's eyes. Emily was sure she was still nervous about what Eden thought of Liz coming to The Log.

"You need help," Eden announced, looking Jo up and down.

"What?" Jo squeaked, a terrified look crossing her face, bracing herself for the telling off she was sure she was going to get.

"With your outfit!" Eden announced cheerily. "I mean, you weren't just going to wear that were you? You should wear those grey pants that make your ass look like pure gold."

"Oh shit," Charlie said absent mindedly as she washed some romaine lettuce. "Your Midas Butt pants! I love those pants. I want to sleep with you when you wear those."

Jo looked between Eden and Charlie, relief washing over her. Her shoulders slumped and she looked, just for a moment, like she was on that shaky ground between laughter and tears. After a moment, though, she just moved forward and enveloped Eden in a hug. Charlie, who was watching, threw the lettuce in a bowl quickly and rushed over, throwing her body onto both of them, eliciting a muffled "oof" from Jo, who was in the middle.

"Emilio, you're missing this gooey group hug we're having," Charlie said, squeezing Jo as hard as she possibly could.

Emily chuckled, and set down the wooden spoon she was using to stir the pasta sauce. "Alright, I'm coming," she piped up and then, wrapped her arms around her friends necks so that their heads pressed together uncomfortably.

"Em, ow!" Eden protested and tried to wiggle out of the crook of her elbow, but failed.

"You guys! We love each other so much," Emily laughed.

"By the way, Emily used palm tree on us earlier, because of this little dinner," Charlie said, as Emily finally released them all. "And we were right in the middle of something, Jo, so you owe Eden an orgasm."

"My deepest apologies, Eden," Jo said seriously. "I did not authorize that use of palm tree, so you just let me know when a good time is for you."

"How about now?" Eden suggested. "In your room, while we locate those pants?"

"Sounds lovely," Jo responded, motioning for Eden to lead the way upstairs.

* * *

By the time Liz arrived, dinner was just about ready. Emily had forgotten she had asked Liz to bring bread, though, so when Jo led her into the kitchen, she was caught off guard by the grocery sack Liz presented to her.

"Here you go," Liz said, beaming. Then her smile faltered at Emily's confusion. "It's bread," Liz explained.

"Oh, right!" Emily said, going to open the sack, but just before she could, Liz snatched it back.

"I mean, I still have to cook it," Liz said in an apologetic tone. "I uh, live in the dorms, so I don't have a stove, oven, you know. I just thought I could cook it here, if you don't mind."

"Of...of course," Emily stammered, looking to Jo for help with the rambling girl in front of her. Jo was just staring at the back of her head adoringly. "Jo, you wanna grab a cookie sheet?"

Jo snapped out of it and immediately began looking around the kitchen like she'd never stepped foot in it before. "Yeah, sure…I'll just…"she stammered, looking around wildly at the all the cabinets.

To be fair, Jo didn't cook very often, but the fact remained that she had lived in this house for almost two years and she most certainly  _did_  know where they kept the cookie sheets and was only losing her mind at this moment because a cute girl was standing in the middle of the kitchen, smiling widely at her while Jo laughed nervously and began to sweat.

"Actually, you know, how about you two walk over to the convenience store and buy a few bottles of that cheap, blackberry wine we like?" Emily suggested, taking the bag of bread from Liz once again. Jo mouthed a silent  _thank you_ at her over Liz's shoulder.

"Alright, we can do that," Liz nodded. "I wasn't sure how much everyone would want," she went on, as she watched Emily's eyebrows shoot up when she looked into the bag and then unloaded five boxes of Texas Toast onto the counter. "So I just decided on one box each…"

"Makes sense to me," Jo shrugged, which only made Liz smile even wider and blush. "Let's go get that wine. You know, the last time we drank this stuff, Eden got so drunk she fell asleep in the shower…"

Emily could just hear Liz start to laugh and reply as the front door closed behind the two. She hurriedly got the oven pre-heated and then threw in three of the five boxes of cheesy garlic bread. It looked so good when she pulled it out that Emily was beginning to think that one box each was just about right. Charlie and Eden had disappeared sometime in the last 20 minutes and Emily was pretty sure they had snuck off to have sex again. Since dinner was basically ready, though, she didn't care.

* * *

The timing of things worked out pretty perfectly: Eden and Charlie showed back up looking extremely pleased with themselves, Jo and Liz got back with the wine, and Emily pulled the garlic bread out of the oven and piled it all onto a plate which she then set on the table with the other food. Finally, they all sat down at the table, and for a few moments they just looked around at one another in silence. Jo looked like she was starting to panic again, and Emily wanted to help, to say something, but her mind had completely blanked for some reason. In fact, Emily felt like she was starting to sweat, too. Maybe this hadn't been a good idea after all.

"This looks fucking amazing," Charlie announced, finally, breaking the uncomfortable silence that seemed to be choking the room. She snatched the plate of garlic bread up, which was just in her reach, and began piling four slices of it onto her empty plate. Then she grabbed the pot of pasta from beside her and started to place large spoonfuls of the noodle and sauce combination directly on top of her bread. "Have you ever seen  _The Lizzie McGuire Movie_?" Charlie asked bright eyed, looking at Liz.

"Oh, here we go," Eden mumbled, rolling her eyes, and beginning to put food on her own plate.

"No, I haven't," Liz admitted. "I wasn't much of a fun of the show."

"Now you've done it," Jo sighed, her head falling into her hand just as she was about to reach for the salad.

"WHAT?" Charlie asked, completely appalled. "Lizzie practically raised me! She's…like a third mother to me."

"Who was your second mother?" Liz asked, looking over to Jo for help.

"Don't ask," Jo mumbled, shaking her head slightly.

"For the millionth time, Charlie," Emily added, "claiming that a fictional middle-school girl raised you is just ridiculous. I mean, Lizzie made a fool of herself in  _most_ of the episodes. She was always tripping and falling down."

"And for the millionth time, Em, I will ask you to please not speak of Lizzie in such a manner in front of me," Charlie spat. "She's just a little clumsy is all."

"It's really no use," Eden commented, starting to dig into her pasta. "She's completely irrational about Lizzie. I mean, do  _you_ know anyone else who has a framed 8x10 photo of Hilary Duff on their bedroom wall?"

"No," everyone chorused.

"Back to my original point, though," Charlie said loudly, ignoring the nonbelievers, as usual.

"Which was?" Jo asked, though she was fairly certain she knew where this was going.

"Spaghetti sandwiches!" Charlie announced, holding up a pile of pasta in between two slice of garlic bread.

"She does this nearly every time we make spaghetti and garlic bread," Jo said, leaning into Liz, who seemed more than happy to have Jo in her personal space.

"Ethan Craft is my spirit animal," Charlie said in a lofty tone. "He shared with me the wonder that is the spaghetti sandwich and I feel it's my duty pass it on to others."

"Ethan is easily the dumbest character on that show," Jo replied, eliciting a shocked gasp from Charlie.

"You take that back, Josephine!" Charlie demanded.

"Make me," Jo said coolly.

Charlie had just loaded up a spoonful of spaghetti and was about to fling it at Jo, who wasn't paying any attention to her as she reached to grab a napkin for Liz, when Eden closed her hand around Charlie's wrist and gave her a reproachful look.

"You're one to talk," Eden said instead. "Christina Yang is practically your patron saint."

"That's completely different," Jo scoffed. "Shonda Rhimes is fucking goddess. Her characters are way more complex and—"

"Now don't start preaching the gospel of Grey's," Eden teased, "we'll be here all night and I've got finals study for."

"Yeah, you're just mad that Doctor Yang can't be your Person," Charlie laughed.

"That's not even true," Jo responded, pointing forcefully at Charlie and then swinging her arm around to point it at Emily instead. "I'm perfectly happy with Emily being my person."

"What? I'm not your person? I thought we decided that  _I_ was your Person!" Charlie said, sounding a little hurt, looking around at the others for support.

"No," Jo stated. "Eden's your Person, and your Eden's. We've been over this."

"I thought that we decided that when someone becomes your significant other they can no longer be your Person," Eden threw in, swigging from one of the bottles of wine and then handing it to Charlie who did the same before she passed it across the table to Liz.

Liz took the bottle a bit apprehensively. Emily had been watching Liz as Liz had been watching the conversation like a tennis match, her head swiveling back and forth to follow the action as it bounced around the table from one girl to the next. Now she was clutching the wine bottle with a furrowed brow and Jo was watching her nervously, as if she expected Liz to just stand up, tell them they were all nuts, and march out of the house, never to be seen again.

After a long moment, Liz shook her slightly and said, "I think Eden's right. The whole point was that Derek  _wasn't_ Meredith's Person. It was beyond that, you know? Her friendship with Christina was more important in a lot of ways than her relationship with Derek. It was unquestionable and foundational for both of them." Then Liz attached her lips to the bottle of wine and threw back a giant gulp, wiping her mouth across her arm as she turned to hand the bottle of wine on to Jo, who was now smiling so widely it looked like her face was about to break apart. She faltered for just a moment before accepting the bottle from Liz.

"But we decided that Charlie and Eden are the exception to that rule," Jo argued, taking her own swig off the bottle and handing it on to Emily.

"Can we please not have The Person argument AGAIN," Emily complained, though she was smiling.

"Okay, fine," Eden said, leaning toward Emily. "Why don't we talk about how hot you think Carmen from  _Spy Kids_ is and how you always beg us to watch that movie with you every time you get drunk!"

"That's completely different!" Emily shouted as everyone roared with laughter. " _Spy Kids_ is a cinematic masterpiece. In fact, I think I'm going to write my final paper for Intro to Film on it, so we'll have to watch it tonight!"

A chorus of groans and statements of disbelief crashed into Emily at the head of the table. She couldn't help but smile lovingly at them all and take another extra long swig from the blackberry wine.

* * *

The next few days passed by quickly. Everyone was so busy with finals, though, that Emily felt like she hadn't seen her friends in weeks. The only real time they spent together was the night they had attended the lighting display performances that Jo and Liz had been preparing for, along with the rest of their class. The pair had done their design for Philip Glass'  _Knee Play 5_  from his opera,  _Einstein on the Beach_. It was literally one of the most beautiful things Emily had ever seen. She'd then had to stay up until 3 am that night working on her Film paper, but she had enjoyed the lighting presentations so much that she didn't even care. After the paper was done, she spent the next two days studying for her two traditional final exams that she had to sit. Before she knew it, those were behind her as well and she was packing her bags for Texas and hoping that she wasn't forgetting anything. Jo's dad and their dogs had arrived the previous afternoon. The girls had spent a fun night playing with the three Labradors and eating the pizza that Jo's dad had ordered, each of them finally able to relax, having finished their finals that day. Charlie and Eden had caught a late train that night to New York and after breakfast in the morning, Jo, her dad, and the dogs had driven back to Wisconsin.

Now it was just Emily, double checking that all the lights in the house were off, that everything was unplugged from the electrical outlets, and that nothing in the fridge or cabinets would spoil while the house sat vacant until they all returned after Christmas. When she was satisfied everything was in order and locking up, Emily bundled herself up and walked to the train station where she was catching a train to Chicago. From there she would fly to Texas. And after a couple of weeks with her parents, she would fly to Philadelphia and be back with Paige again. Back where she belonged, Emily thought, smiling inside of her scarf. She couldn't wait.


	50. Christmas is Coming

"Higher," Paige said, holding the garland above her head, as high as she could reach.

Tuck was standing on the other end of the windows, up on his tiptoes and reaching as far above his head as he could. "I can't go any higher, Paige," he whined.

"WAIT, AM I TALLER THAN YOU?"

"No!" Tuck huffed, dropping the garland at his feet and squaring his shoulders. "We're the same height!"

"Then why can I reach higher than you?" Paige teased. "Grandma! Come in here!"

Paige pushed Tuck out from behind the chairs that sat in front of the window and into the open area of the living room, making him face one way so that she could stand back to back with him.

Hazel came rolling into the living room from where she had been wrapping some presents in the breakfast room, one eyebrow raised questioningly.

"What are you two arguing about now?" she chuckled. She loved having both of her grandchildren around again, but since Tuck had come home for his break from Vallance, the old woman felt like the two hadn't given her a moment's peace. They were always riling each other up about something. Tuck and Paige seemed to be happier than ever, though, so Hazel couldn't complain.

Hazel was still teaching Paige as much as she could in the kitchen every day, but now they had Tuck around, too. He was always putting on another Christmas album ( _John Denver and The Muppets_  was his favorite) and improvising dances for their amusement while they waited for things to cook or cleaned up the mess they inevitably made. At night they decorated the house bit by bit and watched movies and ate more dessert than they really should have. Sometimes Nick and Anne came and joined them for dinner when work permitted. The five of them had decorated the tree about a week after Thanksgiving; the twins asking to hear the story of each ornament, even when the story was just that Hazel had bought the thing at Hallmark because she thought it was cute. The old woman's days were filled with cooking, laughter, and love. She couldn't have been happier, especially now that she felt she was able to help Paige prepare for culinary school. It felt good to be useful again.

"Which of us is taller?" Paige demanded, grinning and scooting her heels back until they bumped into Tuck's behind her, stretching her back to its full height.

"For pete's sake," Hazel murmured. "I can't tell from down here. I'll have to stand up…hold on."

Both Paige and Tuck gave her and hand to grab onto and together they hoisted her up until she was standing firmly on both of her feet. She was doing much better after another month's worth of therapy. Hazel was only using the wheelchair now because she got tired easily and her hip had a tendency to ache if she tried to walk around too much.

Hazel reached her hand up, as the twins were still taller than her even when she was standing, and placed her flat palm on top of Paige's head, then ran it across to her grandson's head. Her hand just skimmed above Tuck's hair. After she had finished, Hazel lowered herself back into her wheelchair and cleared her throat.

Both of the twins turned to look at her, almost identical expressions on their faces: eyes wide, eyebrows raised, and mouths in a firm line. Hazel couldn't help but laugh. It was a sight she had been met with many times over the years.

"Well?" Paige and Tuck said in tandem. Then they both crossed their arms over their chests and turned to give one another the same glower, their brown eyes burning into each other.

"You're the exact same height," Hazel said, her eyes twinkling. The last things those two needeed was more fodder for their arguments. The truth was, Paige had always been just the tiny bit taller than Tuck, but Hazel had always kept that little fact from them. Somehow, they had never found out.

"But…I can reach higher than he can," Paige exclaimed, baffled.

"Maybe you're arms are just longer than his from all those years of swimming?" Hazel suggested, grinning as she turned her wheelchair back toward the breakfast room.

"Yeah, you've got gorilla arms!" Tuck said, laughing loudly.

"Theodore," Hazel said sternly. "Don't taunt your sister. There's nothing wrong with a strong woman. And she needs those long arms to hang the garland!"

"Sorry," Tuck apologized to his grandmother. As soon as she was out of sight though, he turned to Paige with a smug look on his face. "Oh Paige," he said in a high-pitched voice, pretending to swoon. "You have such long arms! You can fuck me from six feet away!"

"What is wrong with you?" Paige snorted, shoving him in the arm. "Who was that even supposed to be?"

"Um…Emily! Duh. Unless you have some other girl benefitting from your long arms."

"Shut up," Paige replied. "I'm a committed woman. I was just thrown off by the voice, since Emily's voice is  _lower_ than yours."

"Fuck off!" Tuck huffed. "Maybe if you had kept swimming, your arms would have gotten long enough to fuck her from a thousand miles away. Now  _that_  would be a weird thing to walk in on, just your arm suspended in mid air, Emily impaled on the end of it…"

"Shut up! You're so gross!" Paige yelled, cuffing Tuck in the back of the head.

He made a swipe at her, but his reach fell just short, causing Paige to start cackling and Tuck to charge at her. They both fell back onto the couch in heap, Paige easily pulling Tuck into a headlock and dragging her knuckles along his skull a few times, giving him a noogie.

"You two better not be fighting in there!" Hazel called from the other room.

"We're not!" the twins called back, just as Tuck brought his elbow down into Paige's ribs.

"Son of a bitch!" Paige hollered out.

"Paige!" Hazel called out warningly.

"Sorry," she replied, pinching Tuck harshly on the ear until tears started to leak out of his eyes.

"Okay, okay!" he hissed finally. "Mercy!"

Paige reluctantly released him. "Say I'm victorious."

"You are victorious…Elastagirl," Tuck snickered.

Paige was just about attack again, her eyes narrowed into dangerous slits as she stared at her brother, when Hazel's voice rang out again.

"If you don't leave in the next five minutes, you won't make it to the airport in time!"

Paige whipped her head around to the grandfather clock that stood in the corner of the room. "Shit, she's right," she mumbled under her breath, then spoke up so that Hazel could hear her in the next room. "Thanks Grandma, I'll leave now!"

Paige was just grabbing her keys when Tuck came up behind her and began to drape the garland they had been attempting to hang around her like a scarf.

"Are you done?" Paige asked when he had completed a third loose loop around Paige's neck and shoulders.

"So festive," Tuck sighed happily, stepping back a few feet to admire his work. "Emily will appreciate how in the holiday spirit you are."

Paige glanced down at herself, then back at Tuck. "I look stupid, Tuck."

"Well, yeah, but that has nothing to do with the garland," he snickered.

"You're such a jerk," Paige laughed as she strode out of the room, into the kitchen, and out into the garage.

* * *

Despite the fact that she and Emily had been talking every day on the phone or on Skype, Paige was actually quite nervous to see her girlfriend again. The last time they had been face to face, over a month ago now, for Emily's birthday, Paige had no idea that she was coming. If she had known, maybe she would have been just as nervous then as she was now. It wasn't scared nervous. It was excited, anxious, pent-up-energy nervous that Paige couldn't quite seem to shake. She was sure that it had been driving her Grandma crazy lately, since it seemed to have been working itself out of Paige's system in increasingly frequent verbal and physical sparring matches with Tuck. She felt bad, but she couldn't help it. Paige felt like a just poured flute of champagne, bubbles streaming through her constantly. She could barely sit still for the past week. Even the (sometimes) multiple sessions of phone sex she and Emily had been engaging in weren't helping anymore. Paige was insatiable and she wanted her girlfriend, in the flesh, immediately. Not necessarily to have sex immediately. She just needed Emily there already, with her. The anticipation was killing her.

Finding a place to park in the enormous parking lot at the airport was more difficult than Paige thought it was going to be. It took her so long that she had to jog inside to make sure she didn't miss Emily's arrival.

By the time she was outside of Emily's arrival gate, standing in the crowd of other people waiting for their loved ones, Paige had quite forgotten that she was artfully wrapped in a garland. So when Emily, wearing a navy blue pea coat and dark red jeans, burst out laughing the moment she caught sight of her, Paige was a bit thrown off. Emily quickly recovered, though, her laugh transforming seamlessly to a smile that made Paige's heart bubble over as she made her way as quickly as possible through the milling crowd until she could throw herself into her girlfriend's arms.

At first they just hugged; every part of their bodies pressed flush against one another. Paige held Emily tightly against her, breathing in the smell she had been craving, the one that sat on Emily's neck, just behind her ears, at her hairline. She ran her hands up and down the girl's back, squeezing her and reveling in the fact that Emily was really there in her arms.

Finally, Emily pulled back just enough to place both of her hands on Paige's cheeks and whisper, "You're so freaking cute McCullers. You should have told me, though. I would've worn some tinsel or something."

"Oh yeah," Paige chuckled, looking down. "I forgot I had this on. I was worried you were laughing at me!"

"I was laughing at you," Emily grinned. "But in like a 'I-can't-believe-I-get-to-sleep-with-that-dork' kind of way."

"Oh, well then," Paige smiled, and then surged forward and kissed Emily eagerly until neither of them could remember where they were anymore.

* * *

A half an hour later, they were back at the car, having successfully retrieved Emily's rather large checked suitcase. Paige had given her a look of disbelief as she nearly lost an arm trying to get it off the luggage carousel. But then Emily had reminded her that she was going straight back to Vallance from Philly and she had to pack  _everything,_ so Paige forgave her suitcase weight.

Once Paige had paid for their parking lot usage and they were headed away from the airport, she turned to Emily with a slightly questioning look on her face. She opened her mouth, looked like she was going to talk, but then just turned back to the road and gripped the steering wheel tighter.

"Just spit it out," Emily sighed dreamily, leaning her head back and staring unabashedly at Paige. It felt so good to be able to stare at her again. She reached out and touched a lock of her hair for just a moment; just to be sure she was really there.

"I probably should have brought this up earlier, like last week," Paige began, "but every time we talked, well, I completely forgot…"

"Because you were too busy perfecting your dirty talk on me?" Emily laughed.

"Yeah, which, by the way, you're still better than I am."

"It's a gift," Emily shrugged. "So what was it your hormones were making you forget to mention to me?"

"Well, we're really close to my Dad's church right now," Paige explained, "and he's been bugging about bringing you by to meet him before we go back to the house. I mean, I know meeting parents is a lot of pressure, but you're going to meeting both of them this week anyway with all the Christmas stuff we'll be doing, and for some reason he just won't—"

"Paige, baby, calm down," Emily said, placing a soothing hand on Paige's thigh as she drove. "I have no problem with going to meet your Dad now."

"Okay, cool," Paige sighed in relief. Hopefully he wouldn't do anything mortifying while they were at the church.

In just a few short minutes, Paige was pulling the Buick into a small parking lot outside of an enormous, stone church in the middle of downtown Philadelphia. The church looked extremely old and the modern buildings that surrounded it only threw its obvious age into sharper relief. Paige took a moment to unwind the garland that was still wrapped around her and threw it into the backseat before she opened her door and climbed out.

When she had gotten out of the car as well, Emily was able to take in the church's grandeur more fully, craning her neck back to look up at the bell tower and admiring the stained glass windows that ran along the side of the building beside which they had parked. She looked over at Paige, who was now leaning against the side of the car and watching her closely. "It's big," Emily commented, making Paige laugh as she pushed off the car.

"Is it?" Paige teased, unable to stop herself from placing a kiss on Emily's cheek.

Paige led her over to a door that opened into what appeared to be a wing of offices, which was caddy corner to the section of the building with the stained glass windows, and ushered her inside before stepping in after her.

* * *

Nick smiled broadly as Paige and Emily walked into his office, which was a short walk down the hall from the side door that they had gone in.

"You must be Emily!" Nick said. He strode around the desk and wasted no time bringing her into a quick hug.

Once he had pulled back, Emily cleared her throat and returned his smile. She hadn't been expecting the hug. Her parents were much more of a formal handshake upon first meeting type of couple. "It's so nice to meet you Mr. McCullers…or should I call you Reverend McCullers?"

"Don't be silly," Nick said as pulled Paige in and gave her a kiss on the forehead. "Just call me Nick. So how was your flight? Did you have any layovers?"

He motioned them into the chairs that sat in front of his desk and went to sit down again himself, closing his laptop in the process.

"My flight was pretty good," Emily said, taking a seat. "And no, thankfully, I had a direct flight. I get kind of claustrophobic on planes. I hate when I have to get off of one plane only to get right onto another one."

"Has Paige told you about the first time she rode on a plane?" Nick asked, an amused gleam in his eye, as he looked at his daughter with a grin on his face.

"Dad," Paige whined. She clearly did not want him to tell Emily this story.

"No, she hasn't," Emily replied, smiling and leaning forward slightly.

"Let's see, you and Theo were about…12 years old, weren't you?" Nick started, looking thoughtful. "I don't understand why you don't like it when I tell this story. It's sweet really."

"And embarrassing," Paige mumbled.

"Oh come on," Nick chuckled.

"We were 11, not 12," Paige relented, sinking down into the leather chair she was extremely familiar with having sat in it hundreds of times over the years.

"That's right! You were 11," Nick said nodding, then turned to Emily to direct the story at her. "Well, we were going on vacation to Florida. All the McCullers were going—my brothers and their families and my parents— for a week and to celebrate New Year's there. All the family trips we'd taken previously were to places within driving distance, so neither Paige nor Theo had ever been on plane before.

"Now, Paige was excited. She asked Anne and I questions for about a month before we left. She wanted to know all about planes and how they stay up in the sky, how long it would take to get to Florida, if they would let her meet the pilot. Theo was a different story. He was terrified. Every time Paige would get us talking about flying, he would go a little green and run off to his bedroom. Well, the day finally came and Theo wasn't doing any better. He threw up three times that morning before we'd even left for the airport. I was sure we'd have to drag him onto the plane.

"Paige somehow talked him into getting on the plane. I'm still not sure how you did that," Nick said, shooting Paige an impressed look. "He refused to sit next to anyone but Paige, though, even though he was technically seated beside his mom. During take off, he squeezed Paige's hand so hard I'm surprised he didn't break it."

"He did fracture it," Paige added. "Mom had to take me to the ER when we finally got to Florida because it was still hurting. Remember? I had to wear that plastic brace all week."

Nick let out a hearty laugh. "I had forgotten that, actually."

Emily looked appropriately horrified as Nick continued the story.

"Anyway, I thought he'd calm down once we were in the air, but about 15 minutes in, he started having a panic attack. I think he looked out the window or something. The flight attendants had just handed out those little bags of pretzel sticks and Paige –" Nick had to stop talking momentarily because he was laughing too hard to continue.

"What?" Emily asked eagerly. "What did you do?" she asked, turning to her girlfriend and grabbing her hand.

"I wanted to take Tuck's mind off it. I was trying to make him laugh," Paige prefaced.

"She stuck them up her nose, the pretzels," Nick went on. "And then she started shooting them at people. You know, blowing them out, one nostril at a time. And pretty soon, Theo was doing it, too. He forgot all about how scared he was. People started complaining, obviously. And Anne and I, well, we were just happy Theo wasn't vomiting on anyone. And it was so funny! I suppose we should have taken the stewardess a bit more seriously."

"Why?" Emily asked between sobs of laughter. "What did they do?"

"They landed the plane in South Carolina and had all four of us escorted off the plane," Paige said, joining in on the laughter now. "We had to wait 5 hours and take another airline down to Florida."

"Oh my god," Emily gasped. "How have you never told me this story before? It's fantastic."

"I don't know," Paige shrugged, wiping a few tears off her face from all the laughter. "It wasn't my most shining moment."

"Well, it was, by far, one of my proudest parenting moments," Nick offered.

The three chatted for a bit after that, Emily telling Nick about her parents and what they did, where her father was stationed in Texas. Then there were the usual college major and future profession questions. Nick also asked about where The Log was and how she enjoyed living there, as he and Anne had been to the campus a couple of times to visit Tuck.

"Well, kids," Nick said finally, "you'll have to excuse me now. I need to finish up a few things for the Christmas Eve service. I can't believe it's only two days away."

"Are you doing two services again this year?" Paige asked, picking up one of the bulletins that were piled on her father's desk and flipping through it.

"Yes," Nick said, a firmer set to his brow than when they were all chatting. "But no live Nativity scene this year," he added, glancing up at Paige and winking. "Those sheep…never again."

"Thank goodness for that," Paige laughed. "Is it okay if I show Emily around the church before we head home?"

"Sure thing, kiddo," Nick replied, fully focused on his laptop screen again. "Would you mind putting those bulletins out on the tables?"

"Yeah, sure," Paige agreed.

She and Emily both grabbed a stack of the bulletins, which were printed with bright pictures of poinsettias on the cover and the words:

FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH OF PHILADELPHIA

CHRISTMAS EVE SERVICES

6:30 PM, 11 PM

Out in the hallway again, following closely behind Paige, Emily asked, "So why are there two services?"

"Well, we do the early one for families with little kids, you know. And my Dad always does a cool children's sermon and we sing carols and stuff. The later one is my favorite. It's the candlelight service. It's more adult themed, with hymns and a real sermon, lots of scripture readings. Then we always finish it by turning off all the lights and everyone gets a candle and then we sing Silent Night. It's so pretty," Paige gushed. "I can't wait for you to see it."

By now they had turned down a few different hallways and walked through a large room that Paige had called, Emily thought, the Narthex, whatever that was. She instructed Emily to put her stack of bulletins down on the small table beside a set of doors that led into the sanctuary. Paige hurried off to the far side of the room to deposit her own stack on a similar table and then jogged back over to Emily's side, grabbing her hand as she came to a stop beside her and pulling her into a kiss. Emily sunk happily into the feeling of Paige's lips moving against hers, opening her mouth to let her girlfriend's tongue swipe along the roof of her mouth. She had just let out a hungry moan when Paige pulled away, letting out a puff of air, clearly trying to calm herself down before she got carried away.

"Come on," Paige said, pulling open the sanctuary door and tugging Emily in.

"Oh wow," Emily breathed, her eyes darting all over the lavishly decorated sanctuary.

The sanctuary was quite large. It even had a balcony with extra seating, and every bit of the place was decorated for Christmas. There were garlands and holly branches hung in the rafters that arched high above the pews, large red ribbons at the end of each row, and mounds of poinsettias in arrangements on the steps that led up to the stage. There were two beautifully decorated Christmas trees at the very front, on the opposite side of the pulpit, and a nearly life-size Nativity scene set in an alcove off to the side of the stage.

Paige was watching Emily adoringly as the other girl took it all in, her eyes wide as she slowly spun in a circle. She could tell that Emily was impressed and her chest swelled with pride.

"Did you help do this?" Emily asked, her voice echoing slightly in the empty sanctuary.

"A little bit," Paige answered, walking further inside, following Emily as she wandered around and continued to inspect the decorations. "The first Sunday after Thanksgiving, usually, some people volunteer to stay after the last church service and we get the whole place decorated. It only takes a couple hours with everyone working together.

"So what did you do?" Emily asked.

"This year," Paige told her, pointing up at the balcony, "I hung those ribbons and holly branches along the front of the balcony. What do you think?"

"Not too shabby," Emily smirked. Her eyes, though, were not focused on the decorations anymore. They were raking up and down Paige's body in a way that easily gave away her train of thought. "Can we go up?"

"Yeah, come on," Paige said, lacing her fingers with Emily and leading her towards a staircase in the back of the sanctuary.

They were about halfway up the staircase when Emily spoke again.

"So is there anyone here other than your Dad?" she asked.

"No, not right now. There's a woman, Debbie, who comes in a few days a week to help with some of the administrative stuff, but she's got the week off for Christmas. Why?" Paige said, side-eying her girlfriend as they emerged in the balcony.

"Oh, no reason," Emily said as walked down to the front of the balcony and looked out over the sanctuary. Her eyes seemed very serious all of sudden, though, as she looked down and fiddled with the red ribbon Paige had spent such a long time securing to the railing. "So what's the plan when we get back to the house?"

"My Grandma's cooking you a welcome dinner. Then after dinner, she wants to watch  _White Christmas_. It's her favorite Christmas movie and we haven't watched it yet this year. It always makes Tuck cry, so it's a pretty good time. Is that okay?" Paige asked, narrowing her eyes as she watched Emily, who was subtly licking her lips now. Something was going on, Paige could feel it, but surely it wasn't what she thought it was…

"Of course, that's sounds like fun," Emily said, turning to face Paige at last. "But it'll be awhile before we get some alone time?"

"Well, yeah. A few hours at least," Paige said with a frown. "Sorry."

"That's okay," Emily said in a low voice, grabbing Paige's hand again as they headed back to the staircase.

A few steps down into the stairwell, though, Emily pulled up short, and Paige just knew, could somehow feel what was about to happen—what Emily wanted to happen. She'd been right, after all. Paige turned towards Emily and slowly began to back her against one of the walls of the stairwell. It was dim, with only the natural light dipping in at the top and bottom of the staircase. She didn't want Emily to trip and fall, so she went slowly. By the time Paige had her firmly pressed up against the wall, Emily was already breathing heavily and gripping Paige's hips tightly.

"I was going to suggest the car," Emily said in a low voice, "but this is good, too."

Paige kissed her slowly, pushing her hands up underneath Emily's shirt, roughly moving the material of her bra up until Emily's breasts came free. Her nipples were already hard as Paige palmed them.

"Paige," Emily moaned quietly as the other girls began to knead her breasts, rolling her thumbs over the nipples a few times. "I missed you."

"We have to be fast and you have to be quiet," Paige husked out, her thoughts completely consumed by how badly she wanted Emily.

"Are we really going to do this?" Emily choked out as Paige began sucking on her pulse point roughly. She was extremely turned on at the prospect of Paige fucking her in a church, but Emily had also been sure that Paige would never go for it. The other girl had been raised in the church, after all. In  _this_ church, she reminded herself. But Paige was now kissing her more fiercely and Emily began to think that perhaps this was something Paige had thought about before. Maybe even frequently.

"I'm going to take you  _right here,_ " Paige growled, her mouth at Emily's ear.

If Emily wasn't wet before, she certainly was now. She must have stumbled upon one of Paige's fantasies with how aggressive the girl was being, how much she clearly wanted to do this  _here._ Emily was more than happy to oblige. Her knees were weak with how much she wanted to do this.

Paige gave Emily's tits one last squeeze before she moved her hands down to the girl's belt buckle. She opened it quickly and then undid Emily's pants as well. She hadn't been kidding about needing to do this quickly. Paige was completely in control of the situation, though. She drug Emily's pants and underwear down to her mid-thigh and wasted no time bringing her hand up to cup Emily's center. She was so hot, literally. Compared to the rather drafty old church they were standing in, Emily's cunt felt like it might burn Paige's hand. She slid her fingers up, parting Emily's folds, causing a sharp intake of breath from the other girl.

"If you think you're going to make any noise, bite my shoulder," Paige instructed as she ran her fingers through the slick heat of Emily's pussy a few times. When she was sure her fingers were coated, Paige wrapped her other hand behind Emily's head, pulling roughly at her hair. A whimper barely slipped past Emily's lips before she caught it. Emily locked her eyes onto Paige's and gave her an almost imperceptible nod, feeling Paige slip inside of her as soon as she did. For a moment Paige just held her fingers still, her eyes fluttering shut with how perfect it felt to be inside of Emily Fields once more.

But the stillness didn't last long, because then Paige was fucking her, hard, pushing Emily's whole body back against the wall. It made a dull thud every time Paige thrust into her, her arm flexing as she worked her fingers in and out of Emily. Emily had never been fucked like this before. It was so satisfying, though, to just let Paige take her this way.

"More," Emily said, though it sounded more like a question. Like she was begging Paige to stretch her out, to take her completely and claim her irrevocably.

Paige was more than happy to oblige. She slipped her fingers out for just a moment before she reentered Emily with three fingers. She could feel Emily's walls getting tighter around her as she curled her fingers inside of her slick cunt, so Paige pressed harder and deeper until she could feel that ridged spot inside of her. She quickly moved her other arm down until it was wrapped firmly around Emily's back and hips, holding her in place while, at the same time, she rocked her body even more forcefully into the wall of the staircase until Emily was coming apart in her arms. Emily's eyes slammed shut as she came, and her mouth dropped open, but she was completely silent as she shook and eventually went limp.

It was complete bliss. Everything was perfect, Emily thought vaguely as Paige pulled out of her. And Paige was everything.


	51. Stillness is an Impossible Movement

The house was silent—a deep silence that Emily had never experienced before; it felt heavy, rooted, and warm. At home, silence had always been equated with absence. Silence was her father being gone and in danger. Silence was her mother being upset with her for one thing or another and needing space. Or just coming home to find that her mother had to stay late at work and she was on her own for dinner. But this silence was completely different. Emily couldn't remember the last time she had been this relaxed.

It was Christmas Eve. 1 o'clock in the afternoon. Flurries were making their way lazily across Paige's bedroom window. Emily was lying with her head in Paige's lap while the other girl slowly slid her fingers through her long, dark hair.

Tuck had gone to meet a few high school friends at a coffee shop. Hazel was napping on the living room couch, the lights of the Christmas tree dancing merrily across her resting face when Paige had covered her with a blanket. They had nowhere to be until Christmas Eve service that night.

"This is so nice," Emily sighed. "Just being here with you."

"This used to be my least favorite time of day," Paige said casually, "right after lunch, because Grandma would always take a nap. And I'd be so bored. Tuck would usually read while she napped, which was boring to me when I was little. So I used to wait until she was definitely asleep and then I'd steal her shoes and hide them in different places around the house." Paige chuckled at the memory while Emily smiled up at her.

"Or," Paige added, "if it was around Christmas, I'd rearrange the figurines in the nativity scene. Make it look like all the sheep and donkeys were eating Baby Jesus and Mary and Joseph had slipped away for a quickie."

Emily laughed and shook her head in disbelief. "Paige, that's horrible. You were such a little heathen."

"I got a lot of lectures from my father about that, but Grandma would just laugh and tell me it was good to have a creative outlet."

"You're a lot like her, you know," Emily commented locking eyes with her girlfriend. "Your eyes, your sense of humor, your laugh."

"Really?"

"Mmmhmmm," Emily hummed. "When I exploded the flour all over the kitchen yesterday, I noticed. You have the same laugh."

Paige giggled as she thought of the state of the kitchen when she had entered it the morning previous. Emily had attempted to make pancakes while Paige was showering and she'd failed miserably.

"I can't believe you just turned on Darlene full blast with all those dry ingredients in there!" Paige laughed. "That's like rule number one of electric mixers."

"Yeah well, I can't believe you actually named your stand mixer  _Darlene_!" Emily countered.

"It reminds me of you," Paige said softly, leaning down to give Emily a kiss.

Emily just hummed happily when Paige pulled away after a few seconds, keeping her eyes closed. "You know, a nap doesn't sound so bad right now."

"No, Em, come on! I don't want to go to sleep," Paige whined. "Let's watch a movie or something."

Emily narrowed her eyes at the girl. "If I fall asleep, you're going to hide my shoes, aren't you?"

"You'll likely never see them again," Paige responded with a challenging smirk on her face.

Emily huffed and sat up. "You're still a five year old. I hope you know that."

Anything else Emily may have had to say on the matter, however, was cut short as Paige lunged forward and pinned Emily underneath her on the bed, her lips working against the sensitive skin of Emily's neck. "Maybe in some ways, but I definitely didn't like kissing this much when I was five."

Emily felt her eyes roll back as Paige attached her lips to her pulse point and started sucking. "Oh—" Emily tried speaking but it just turned into a long moan as Paige ground her hips down between her legs teasingly.

"What was that?" Paige asked, smiling slightly.

It was a struggle, but Emily pulled her mind out of her vagina and back into her head. "If you give me a hickey before Christmas Eve church service, I'm not going to give you your presents."

"Okay, okay," Paige said, pulling back immediately, panic in her eyes as she rolled off Emily, holding her hands up in surrender. "Truce!"

"Is there a mark?" Emily asked, rubbing on her neck where Paige had been sucking. "My dress for tonight is kind of low cut…"

"No…" Paige said, her voice laced with uncertainty. "It's….I'm sure it'll fade before tonight. You can barely see it. So!" Paige said, deciding it was best to change topics before Emily retaliated and gave her a giant hickey on her neck that her parents were sure to see. "How about that movie?"

Emily's eyes perked up in excitement suddenly. "Can we watch trailers instead?"

Paige just looked at her with a confused expression.

"Movie trailers?" Emily clarified.

"You mean like the previews they show before you watch an actual movie?" Paige asked.

"Yeah!" Emily answered, a big grin plastered on her face.

"Why would you want to watch those when we can just watch a full length movie?"

"Because they're beautiful…" Emily shrugged shyly. "It's like…the heart, cut out of the chest while it's still beating…"

"You've completely lost me, but if you say so," Paige grinned. She couldn't help but find Emily the most attractive when she spoke passionately about things like this. Even if the thing was a movie preview.

"It's like, I took this class with a professor who, instead of making us write really long essays, he would give us a paper topic and then tell us our essays couldn't be longer than 500 words. It was amazing! It was the first time since I was about 15 that I felt truly challenged by a writing assignment. I mean, given enough time and space to make a point, anybody can answer a question or prove a theory. But simplicity? That's what's difficult. I had to learn how to strip away everything that wasn't necessary, everything that wasn't meaningful. Zero adjectives. I had to make sacrifices to get to the real heart of what I was trying to say. So…that's why I like movie trailers, because it's this tiny, contained world built of nothing but the absolutely essential parts of a story. I guess I like them because they remind me of poems."

Emily had gotten up off the bed as she spoke and began pacing around the room, her gait stopping and starting as she gesticulated. Paige thought she was breathtaking.

"And why do you like poetry so much?" Paige asked, completely enraptured by the things Emily was saying, never wanting her to stop talking.

The question stopped Emily in her tracks. No one had ever asked her before. It had been such a fact of her life; Emily fields loved poetry for such a long time, she'd almost forgotten why.

"Well…" she began, her brow creased in thought, "with fiction, you know, it's about action, moving forward, the passage of time. Even if it's just a single hour or a single day, a story takes you some place. It's a journey. But poetry, at least for me, is about stopping time and capturing a moment, an experience, or a feeling, and holding it still— cupping it in your hands. It's always been all wrapped up with memory for me. And stillness—how stillness is an impossible movement. I guess that's why I like it so much. It's the closest thing I have to stopping time."

"You make me want to write poetry even though I know I would completely butcher it," Paige admitted. "I'd write a poem about this moment right now. You and me in my room on Christmas Eve."

"Just stop time? Keep us here forever?" Emily asked from the middle of the room. "Hold all the snowflakes in midair?"

Paige smiled at that thought, looking out the window to the thickening snow and the white sky. "No, not forever. You can't hold love still, Em. You've got to let it keep moving or it stops growing. I'd like a poem, though, to look back on and remember."

"I talk a lot, but I think you're smart one in this relationship," Emily said as she walked over to Paige and pulled her up off the bed. "Let's live in a snow globe together," Emily whispered as she held Paige close against her.

"No, Em," Paige replied gently. "I'm going to give you the whole world."

And then Paige kissed Emily in a way that felt very much like a promise.

Soon after that Tuck got home and Hazel woke up from her nap, calling Paige downstairs so she could help her get dressed for service that night. The sweet, momentary stillness of the afternoon in the upstairs room of the red house was broken. But Emily found she didn't mind as much as she thought she would, because then there was getting dressed in the deep crimson dress she had brought for the occasion. Tuck came upstairs while she was doing her makeup and helped her apply concealer to her hickeys after he spotted one on the back of her shoulder, too. They talked about Jo and Liz and how Jo had been texting them both in a delirious haze of happiness telling them about how she and Liz had been staying up all night talking on the phone. After that, Tuck found a spare tie and challenged Emily to a double Windsor battle to see who could tie a satisfactory knot faster. Tuck won, but Emily wasn't too surprised; she only wore ties when she was being James Litpon.

Once Hazel was all ready to go, which took quite a while, Paige ran upstairs clutching a black dress that the two had found in Hazel's old clothes, Tuck yelling after her that she only had 15 minutes before they needed to leave. The ensuing noises that filtered down to Hazel, Tuck, and Emily in the living room sounded like Paige was wrestling a gorilla, but when she reemerged, walking slowly down the stairs in the tight black dress, black heels, curled hair, and red lipstick, all three were left speechless. And Emily knew if she had stopped time two hours earlier, she never would have gotten to see Paige like this, a little shy and quiet but so sexy, and that would have been a damn shame.

After carefully helping Hazel into the front passenger seat and stowing her walker in the trunk, the others piled in and they were off to the church. The plan was to attend the first service at 6 pm, then go out to dinner with Nick and Anne, and then return to the church for the candlelight service at 11pm.

The roads weren't too bad yet, as cars had been continually driving during the day, keeping the streets mostly clear of the falling snow. Still, Paige was extra careful and hyper aware as she drove, never taking her eyes of the road for even a second; her three favorite people in the world were in the car, after all. "Precious cargo," Hazel would have called it if Paige had voiced her thoughts.

Luckily, they all arrived in one piece and Paige pulled into the handicap parking space that was closest to the rear entrance of the church. She would have parked at the front, closer to the sanctuary entrance, but Hazel couldn't go up the stairs anymore.

As she got out of the car, Paige felt her stomach give an unruly lurch and had to pause a moment to figure out  _why_ she was suddenly feeling so nervous. She'd been to this church a million times—and these where her favorite services of the year.  _And_ she had Emily with her. At the thought of Emily, Paige stomach churched uncomfortably again.  _Oh._ With a sickening thought that felt more like taking a two by four over the head, Paige realized she had no idea how she was supposed to act around Emily here.  _At the church._ She had been to church since coming out to her family, but she hadn't been to church with her girlfriend. It was a whole different ball game. She really should have talked to her father about this before that night. Did he want her to pretend to just be friends or…what? She knew her dad was fine and accepting of her sexuality but Paige also knew that there were many members of the congregation who were less open minded. Paige also knew that lesser things than the pastor having gay kids had caused resignations. And Jesus!  _I mean, gosh,_ Paige corrected herself in her head, not wanting to tempt fate by taking the Lord's name in vain.  _Gosh_ , she and Tuck were  _both_ gay. What were the chances? How the hell— _heck_ —had he dealt with all this for so many years? Why had Paige never bothered to ask him? She hadn't even considered what it would feel like to walk into your father's church as a gay person until she was the one doing it. Now Paige was nervous  _and_  she felt like a jerk for not paying more attention to what Tuck was going through.

It was as if Tuck was reading her mind. Just as Paige had finished locking up the old Buick, all these thoughts cascading through her head, she heard Tuck say, "Hey Em, would you mind walking in with Grandma? Paige and I'll be right behind you."

Emily immediately searched out Paige's eyes, casting a questioning look at her girlfriend. She seemed reluctant to go ahead, but Paige gave her a reassuring smile and Emily nodded. "Sure."

"Come on," Hazel urged, pushing her walker through the snow. "I've got a lot of folks to introduce you to. I've been talking you up."

"You're the most popular person at this church aren't you?" Emily asked, laughing as she wrapped a protective arm around the old woman's shoulders.

"Well, I don't know about that," Hazel said, "but I do organize the prayer chain, so I know all the good gossip."

As soon as they were out of earshot, Tuck turned to Paige with his eyebrows raised. "Why do you look like you're about to hurl?"

"I just…church?" Paige tried and failed to communicate. "I don't know what's allowed…or…"

"You really over think shit sometimes," Tuck sighed. "Just…act normal. If you want to hold her hand, hold her hand. If you want to kiss her, kiss her. Behave as you would in any other public space. There's always going to be people who think we're disgusting, no matter where we are. Church is no different."

"What about Dad?" Paige asked, still very skeptical about everything that Tuck was saying.

"What about him?" Tuck asked.

"I don't want him to lose his job or something."

"Paige, this isn't the 1950s and this isn't even that conservative of a church. No one is going to run Dad out of town! And  _come on._ We grew up in this church. With these people! They love you. And some of them probably had suspicions, to be honest. "

"What do you mean?" Paige asked, looking down at herself as if expecting to see some kind of HOMOSEXUAL label pinned to her dress.

"I just think…there were probably some signs," Tuck said carefully.

"Like what?" Paige asked, casting her mind back over her life in the church. "You mean that summer I refused to wear anything other than tie-dye?

Tuck laughed loudly at that. "No, but that was a dark period for you. I don't know. I just mean, like…" Tuck shrugged. "I used to sneak off with Aaron Decker during VBS so we could kiss in the basement. You probably had a crush on one of the girls at some point. Parents pick up on stuff like that." Tuck turned to give his sister an encouraging sort of smile, and was a little thrown off at the expression on her face.

Paige eyes were wide, like a cartoon character who had just seen an oncoming train. She was just staring at Tuck. "Are you being serious? About Aaron?"

"Yeah," Tuck admitted. "What's the big deal? We were just kids. It was innocent."

"I did, too!" Paige shouted.

"You did what, too?" Tuck asked, turning so that he and Paige were standing face to face.

"I used to sneak off and kiss Aaron Decker, too! But up in the choir loft!"

"What?! That little—" Tuck fumed. But before he could decide exactly  _what_ Aaron Decker was Paige let out a burst of laughter into the cold night air. And Tuck never could hold back when Paige laughed like that. It had often gotten him in trouble during church, actually.

They both collapsed against the side of the car and laughed until their stomachs hurt and tears were rolling down their faces and Paige's nerves were well and truly forgotten.

* * *

Inside the church, Hazel was eagerly leading Emily around to a group of various elderly people. She had already been introduced to so many people in the span of 10 minutes that her head was starting to spin. Emily tried to be polite, smiling and nodding as Hazel explained who each person or couple was, how many years she had known them, what activities they had taken part in together; it was all just a tad overwhelming. She wished Paige and Tuck would hurry up with whatever they were doing. Emily wasn't from a family who went to church. She wanted her girlfriend there to support her in this unfamiliar environment. Especially since she was there to be with Paige in the first place.

"So, Emily," a frail, old man named Roger said, interrupting Emily as she scanned the edges of the room for Paige, "if you attend Vallance, does that mean Theodore's your beau?"

Emily laughed nervously as Roger grinned at her, then looked quickly to Hazel who was shaking her head and sighing.

"Roger, if I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times! Theodore is GAY!" Hazel said loudly.

For a moment Emily wasn't quite sure if Hazel was mad at this man or just exasperated that he'd forgotten. She could feel beads of sweat starting to form on her forehead at the edge of her hairline. Should she say something? Try to make a joke? A few people who were milling about in the area closest to them had turned to look when Hazel had raised her voice. Emily froze, a textbook deer in the headlights look on her face. But then, suddenly, there was a hand on the small of her back, the fingers splaying out gently, the thumb tracing a line down her spine and Paige was there.

"Actually, Rog," Paige said, smiling her broad smile that made Emily melt, "Emily's  _my_  beau."

Then she winked at him.

"You kids think of all sorts of things we never would have dreamed of in my day," Roger replied jovially.

"Ah, come on," Paige said, tilting her head. "Same sex couples weren't  _completely_  unheard of when you were young. And you spent all that time overseas during the war! I'm sure you at least met someone who was gay."

"Well, when I was stationed in France, there was one man," Roger said. Then he leaned in close to Paige and whispered hoarsely, "He kissed me one night, in the alley outside of a bar. And you know what?" Roger asked, a conspiratorially look in his eyes. "I kissed him back!"

Paige gasped dramatically which just made Roger roar with laughter. With Paige beside her, Emily could see that Roger was a harmless, friendly old man who really had just forgotten Tuck was gay.

It was as if the tense moment had never happened. And for some reason, watching Paige diffuse the whole situation, it was really doing it for Emily. Suddenly, her mind was full of images of dragging Paige into the nearest women's restroom, pushing the skintight dress up around her hips, and dropping to her knees. But there was no time for that now.  _The family Christmas Eve church service was about to begin._ Emily shook her head at her own inappropriateness. It was Paige's fault, though, really. People shouldn't be allowed to be so sexy in church.

Emily could see Tuck on her other side as Paige continued talking to Roger. He was standing behind Hazel, and he leaned in to whisper something into his grandmother's ear. Whatever it was made Hazel smile and she reached back to where one of Tuck's hands was on her shoulder and clutched it, squeezing his hand firmly for a moment before starting to push her walker forward again.  
Just a few seconds after that, Paige's mother bustled over, interrupting Roger's on-going war story.

"We better go sit down," Anne said, kissing Paige on the cheek. "Service is about to start. Good evening Roger," she added nodding to the old man.

"Sure, Mom," Paige agreed, slipping her hand into Emily's. "After you, Roger.'

"To be continued, I suppose," Roger remarked as he turned and started shuffling towards the sanctuary door.

Paige led Emily into the sanctuary and they, as well as Anne, joined Tuck and Hazel where they were seated in the third row from the front. There was some murmuring still going on as the attendants settled themselves and families with small children attempted to maintain some control on their excited offspring, but it quieted almost completely when Nick stood up from his seat at the front of the church.

Paige felt utterly content. She watched as her father stood, moved to the pulpit, and greeted the congregation. The last thing she expected in that moment was for Emily to lean over, and whisper in her ear.

"I wish I was on my knees in front of you right now," Emily husked, her voice dripping with want.

As soon as the sentiment registered in Paige's unprepared brain, heat spread instantly throughout her entire body. She glanced over at Emily, who was now resolutely facing the front, the picture of innocence and decorum; the only indication Paige got that she hadn't just imagined what Emily had said was the small squeeze the other girl gave her hand.  _Merry Fucking Christmas_ , Paige thought, grinning like the little kids that surrounded them, as she turned back to the front of the church. Although, unlike those kids, she was already sure she would be getting exactly what she wanted for Christmas.

Maybe Paige didn't believe in Santa anymore, but miracles were a different matter. And, quite frankly, the fact that Emily Fields was sitting beside her on Christmas Eve, holding her hand for all the world to see, was the surest miracle Paige had ever experienced.

* * *

In the years to come, Paige couldn't remember what her father had preached about or what hymns they sang. She wasn't sure of which charity they had taken up an offering for, or whether it had continued to snow or not. But she could recall the exact weight Emily's hand in her own and the smell of her perfume, which lingered at the edges of so many of Paige's memories. She remembered the green robes her father was wearing and the way her mother smoothed the white stole around his neck after the service had ended, and then, how he leaned down and kissed her before moving to front door to shake hands with everyone as they left. Paige knew for certain they had gone to Macaroni Grill for dinner because Tuck had gotten red sauce all over his white shirt, and Hazel had promised to teach her how to make tiramisu the next day, if they had time.

After dinner, the family headed back to the church for the second service— the candlelight one that Paige adored. That service, Paige always remembered every detail of because everything was Emily. Emily in the warm, dark sanctuary, singing quietly, unsure of the words, as the candlelight blurred everything around her into oblivion. Paige couldn't take her eyes off her.

It was already Christmas when they got home, but just barely. The grandfather clock in the corner of the living room was stuttering out its quarter hour chimes when the girls, Tuck, and Hazel tromped in through the garage door, brushing snow off their coats. It was already Christmas when they hugged one another and said Merry Christmas and good night in the outdated kitchen, and headed toward their separate rooms. It was already Christmas when Paige kissed Emily hungrily, smearing her lipstick all over the girl's neck, a satisfyingly dark red against Emily's brown skin. And it was most certainly Christmas when Paige asked "make love to me?" And Emily didn't wait and single second before she answered, "yes."

* * *

Up until Christmas Eve and morning, Tuck had avoided the upstairs bedroom. He was pretty sure that Em and his sister were permanently connected at the mouth and vagina any time they were alone and the last thing he wanted was to confirm his suspicions. But, now he was poised outside the closed door waging a fierce battle between his brain and heart. His brain was team  _Ew Lesbian Sex_. His heart was team  _I Can't Open Presents Without My Sister!_  He pressed his ear against the door for the third time, listening hard for any sounds of movement on the other side. Finally, he braced himself and flung the door open. Seeing no sexual activities were occurring, Tuck rushed forward and hurled himself onto the bed, directly on top of Paige.

"Wake up, wake up, wake up!" He chanted. "Paige, it's Christmas!"

Tuck adored Emily, he really did. But in that moment his main focus and concern was the only woman he was certain he was going to spend his entire life with; his sister whom he'd never known a Christmas without.

Before he realized what had happened, Paige had him in a headlock, chuckling as he feigned choking noises.

"Shhh, Theodore," Paige said in a low voice. "It'll hurt less if you don't struggle. I'll kill you quickly, I promise."

The chokehold was definitely more of a tight hug, though so Tuck wasn't worried.

"Jesus, you look like femme-y murder scene," Tuck laughed, seeing Paige's smudged makeup and the mess of lipstick smudged over what he could see of Emily's neck.

"Shut up," Paige mumbled.

"We had very fancy sex last night," he heard Emily mumble from where her face was buried in a pillow.

"It appears so," Tuck said. Even talk of his sister's sex life couldn't dampen his spirits on Christmas. "Will you two losers please clean yourselves up and come downstairs so we can open presents?! Mom and Dad just got here."

"Okay. Fine. We're getting up. And as it's Christmas I'm going to ignore the fact that you just called us losers," Paige relented.

"Yay!" Tuck cheered.

"You're a coffee drinker, aren't you, Emily?" Nick asked when Emily and Paige had emerged from the bedroom and made their way down into the kitchen. They were no longer covered in each other's lipstick, but they were still looking very sleepy.

"Oh yes, absolutely," Emily grinned, accepting the large, steaming mug Nick was handing to her.

"And an orange juice for you, honey," Nick said, handing a tall glass to his daughter.

Rather than accept the glass, however, Paige just moved in and wrapped her father in a big hug, which he gladly returned, placing a kiss on top of her head. "Merry Christmas, Dad."

"Merry Christmas, kiddo," Nick replied and hugged his daughter a little bit tighter. "Why don't you two grab a cinnamon roll and come on out to the living room? Your brother is going to blow a gasket if we don't open presents soon."

"Finally!" Tuck shouted when they had moved into the living room.

"Would you please calm yourself?" Paige shot at her brother as she moved around the room, hugging her mother and grandmother and wishing them both a Merry Christmas.

"It's not even 9 o'clock yet," Emily commented as she joined Hazel, who was patting the seat next to her on the couch and beckoning her over.

"When these two were kids, we had to make a rule that they weren't aloud out of bed until 6 am," Hazel told her as Emily gave her a one armed hug. "If we hadn't, they would've burned the whole house down by 4 o'clock probably!"

"We weren't that bad," Tuck mumbled.

"Yes, you were," Anne laughed.

"We only almost burned the house down  _once_ ," Tuck insisted. "And that wasn't even at Christmas. It was 4th of July."

Paige, who was now helping Tuck hand out everyone's presents, must've read Emily's mind because she said, "We were having a contest to see who could light the most matches at once."

"We got up to 15 before it they all sort of turned into this giant flame ball," Tuck added. "Paige freaked out."

"I panicked  _a little_ ," Paige said, shoving Tuck's shoulder on her way past him, handing Hazel a brightly wrapped package.

"You threw the whole handful of matches at the wall," Tuck said shrewdly. "You freaked."

"The wall?" Emily asked, slightly confused about where exactly they'd been having this contest.

"We were on the front porch," Paige told her.

"Anyway, we put it out fairly quickly," Tuck argued. "We had a jug of water handy, so it's not like we weren't being safety conscious."

"Theo, you were literally _playing with matches_ ," his father stated.

Tuck huffed, but seemed defeated nonetheless. "Fine! We  _were_  that bad."

"Although, one good thing did come out of that," Nick went on. "I got to paint the house a different color."

"Oh hush!" Anne laughed. "That was a very pretty color."

"It was  _puce_ ," Paige laughed. "Anything named puce is automatically gross. It sounds too much like puke."

"Alright, alright. Enough color shaming. Who wants to go first?" Anne asked the group at large.

Paige had explained to Emily before they'd come downstairs that the McCullers all took turns, going around in a circle when they were opening presents.

"Me!" Tuck shouted.

And so it began.

The first present that Emily opened was from Hazel. She had given Emily a stack of old journals she had never used, which Hazel told her were from the 60s. They were very beautiful, even if the paper was yellowing. She had also picked out a watch for Emily, which had a white leather strap and a minimalistic face to it.

Tuck had gotten her a book of poetry by a man named Keith Ratzlaff. He had come to do a reading the previous spring at Vallance and she and Tuck had both enjoyed it immensely. Jo had gone with them as well, but she'd just been bored.

Nick and Anne had picked out a few movies they thought she'd like, with Paige's suggestions and advice, of course. There was  _The Hours, My Fair Lady, Stardust,_ and an old one that Emily had never even heard of before— _Please Don't Eat the Daisies_ , which starred Doris Day, who Emily had taken a liking to when they'd watched  _The Man Who Knew Too Much_ in her film class.

Emily had been saving Paige's present for last. Finally, when it was her turn again, she picked up the soft, lumpy package that had "To Em From Paige" scrawled across it in Sharpie. She unwrapped it quickly and couldn't help the wide smile that spread across her face as she unfolded the yellow and black Hufflepuff–themed scarf and immediately wound it loosely around her neck.

"See? I told you I'd knit you a scarf," Paige told her proudly. They both knew she was referring to that night at The Log when Paige had been drunk and made them Eggs Benedict; the night Emily had let herself hope again.

As for Paige—her grandmother had bought her a set of real chef's knives with a black carrying case. Tuck had gotten her a handful of things, which included, wooden spoons that were also drumsticks at the ends, the 3rd season of  _The L Word,_ an apron that looked like R2-D2, an Indigo Girls CD, and also a fountain pen, for some reason. Her parents gave her a pair of pretty expensive headphones she'd been wanting and a new pair of Converse as well.

She, too, had saved Emily's present for last, but when her turn came around again, Paige realized that she was the only person in the room who had two present left instead of one.

"Did you get me two presents, Em?" Paige asked. She was well aware of the fact that Emily was struggling to even pay her tuition for the upcoming term. The last thing she wanted was to add to that burden, so she was very relieved when Emily shook her head.

"No, that smaller one is from the girls."

"Really?" Paige asked, smiling as she picked up the package and began to unwrap it. Having never had many friends to buy presents for, it hadn't even occurred to Paige that she should get something for Eden, Charlie, and Jo.

"It's not much, just something they wanted you to have," Emily told her sensing that Paige was now questioning if she should have gotten them all something as well.

Once all the wrapping paper was peeled off, Paige discovered that the package was a framed 5x7 picture. It was one of the group ones they'd taken that fall in the dining room of The Log when Paige had visited for she and Tuck's birthday. It was sort of ridiculous actually. Jo wasn't even facing the camera, she was turned, mid-gesture, and looked like she was saying something to Tuck who was looking warily at Eden, who was holding Charlie piggy-back-style, both of them cracking up and looking like they were about to collapse at any moment. On the other side was Emily and Paige (sporting a giant hickey on her neck), grinning stupidly at each, apparently oblivious to the chaos happening beside them. It had been the first of the few they tried to take using the timer on Jo's phone.

Paige laughed aloud just looking at the picture.

"Charlie also printed out an 8x10 and framed it and hung it in the living room. She says it's her favorite picture in the world," Emily explained.

"I love it," Paige told her simply and passed the photo over to her parents so they could look at it.

Paige waited until Hazel had looked at the picture as well and Emily had handed it back to her before she turn her attention to Emily's present. She picked it up and shook it gently, Emily giving her a stern look as she did so.

"None of that," Emily said, smiling now. "Open it!"

Paige ripped the paper away and was met with...a book. It was a poetry book.

"Isn't that your old text book?" Tuck asked, staring the Norton Anthology Paige was clutching, a look of confusion on her face.

They had agreed to make presents for each other, but this seemed like a bit of a cop out. Paige looked up at Emily, who looked worried.

"I, uh, marked all my favorites for you," she said meekly. "Maybe we could go through them together…later?"

There was something about the tone of Emily's voice that made Paige push away the disappointment and sadness she was feeling about the present. It sounded like Emily was pleading with her not to be upset.

Instead of expressing what she was thinking (that this would be a good present for  _Emily_ , but not for her) she cleared her throat and said, "Yeah, that sounds fun. Thank you, Emily."

After the presents were finished and they'd all eaten a bit more for breakfast, chatting about this and that, Paige announced that she was going to get dressed properly for the day. Emily hurriedly excused herself, too, grabbed the book she'd given Paige from the living room, and followed her girlfriend up the stairs.

"Paige," Emily said as soon as the door was closed. "I know you're upset. Can I explain please? Baby?"

Paige reluctantly turned around. "I just...poetry isn't really  _my_  thing, Em. I mean…I like it, but…I worked really hard on your scarf."

"I worked really hard on this, too," Emily countered, offering up the book again.

"By bookmarking your favorite poems?" Paige asked, trying to keep the hurt out of her voice but failing.

"Paige. Do you really think I would just give you an old book for Christmas? That's not really what it is. But I couldn't explain it in front of everyone else because...well, that would sort of ruin the purpose of it."

"So what is it then?" Paige asked, curious now.

"It's called a book safe. Look," Emily urged, sounding hopeful as she pressed the book into Paige's hands.

Paige opened the book, or at least she tried to. The first 50 or so pages were normal but the rest of the book had been glued together somehow and the center of the pages had been carved out in a large rectangle with about an inch border being left on every side. The hollowed out portion of it wasn't empty, though. There were lots of envelopes inside it and Paige could also see a few CDs underneath those.

"See? You can keep stuff in it. Money or secret documents, whatever is important to you. Then you put it on a bookshelf and it looks just like a regular book. So nobody knows about it but you."

"Okay, this is kind of genius," Paige grinned. "I'm sorry I doubted you."

"You should be," Emily pouted. "Ye of little faith."

"I'm sorry," Paige said, wrapping Emily in her arms and kissing her. "So what's all this stuff in here already?"

"Just some letters I wrote you when we were apart. And I made you some CDs. But you can look at that stuff later."

"You're the best, Em."

"I know," Emily quipped back.

After a few more minutes of kissing, they really did get dressed, and then went back downstairs to join the rest of the family. It was Christmas after all. They couldn't spend the whole day fucking. Even if they wanted to.

* * *

That afternoon they all went over to Nick's brother's house; a place Paige simply referred to as Aunt Kay and Uncle Russ's house. Emily thought it seemed a bit more like a mansion than a house, as Paige led her around and introduced her to her Dad's entire side of the family. Emily kept count: excluding Paige, Tuck, their parents and Hazel, there were 15 other people at the McCullers Family Christmas. They spent the afternoon playing Cranium with Hazel, a few of Paige's cousins, and an uncle. Then around 5pm everyone sat down to a Christmas dinner that looked like the live version of a Norman Rockwell painting. Emily had never been a part of something that was so festive, yet no one seemed to be trying to make it so. No one seemed stressed or grumpy. They were all just happy to be together, contributing something. And everyone seemed to like her, to include her in conversations and jokes, to tell her stories about Paige and Tuck. It was overwhelming and breathtaking. Emily loved it.

* * *

The next few days seemed to fly by and before Paige knew it, it was New Years Eve, the last night of Emily's stay. She and Tuck would be taking a Greyhound bus back to Illinois the next morning. The original plan was to fly, but Emily didn't have enough money for the plane ticket. Emily had told Tuck that it was fine, she would take the bus alone and he could fly, but he insisted on going with her.

"Are you sure you're okay with this?" Paige asked as she stirred the contents of the bowl in front of her.

Emily was sitting on the kitchen counter, her legs swinging back and forth as she watched Paige stir. She dipped her finger into the edge of the bowl and then licked the mixture off her pinky, her eyes closing as she savored the taste.

"Mmmm. Jesus that's rich," Emily commented. "What is this one?"

"Pound cake," Paige answered. "The last time I made it, it came out way too dry, so I'm tweaking it."

"Talk baking to me, baby," Emily purred. "You're so sexy when say stuff like that."

"Yeah? You like that?" Paige asked playfully, moving to stand between Emily's legs. "Lick my spatula, bitch."

Neither of them could keep a straight face after that and they lapsed into giggles as Tuck walked into the kitchen.

"It doesn't sound like much baking is happening in here," he stated. "You gotta finish that thing so we can eat it during our movie marathon tonight. I went to the store and got you strawberries, as requested. Now bake, woman! Bake!"

"Get out, you jerk," Paige said, swatting away his hand as he tried to taste the batter as well.

"Fine, but if I don't smell cake in 15 minutes, I'm coming back in and I'm cracking the whip!"

"Yes, sir," Emily replied, saluting Tuck as he passed.

"See, Paige, look at that respect. Why can't you be more like Emily?"

"I know you too well to respect you," Paige shrugged. "I mean, I've seen you pee your pants."

"Good point. Carry on," Tuck acquiesced as he left the room.

"Seriously, Em, are you sure this is okay?" Paige asked, looking around unsurely at her messy apron and Hazel, who she could see working on her crossword puzzle in the breakfast room. "I mean, I could take you out somewhere. To a club or a bar or somewhere that isn't my grandma's living room. I don't want you to have a lame New Years."

"Sweetheart, baby, fire of my loins," Emily rattled off, making Paige blush and laugh again. "I don't want any of that. I want to stay right here with your awesome Grandma and your stupid brother, who I also love, and your beautiful face. Besides, I don't really like big crowds."

Paige looked at Emily, resignation settling into her eyes. "If you were back at Vallance you'd be hanging out with your friends, partying..."

Emily rolled her eyes at that. "I would be with Eden and Charlie and Jo, yes. But we'd be doing the same thing we're doing here. We wouldn't be bar hopping. We'd be talking and drinking and watching movies. Maybe they'd force me to play Inside the Actors Studio. Maybe Charlie would try to pee off the roof. Maybe we'd have to duct tape Jo's mouth shut to get her to stop talking about Liz."

Paige laughed quietly as Emily went on.

"You're already giving me everything I want, darling," Emily reassured her one more time.

Finally, Paige seemed to believe her. "In that case, you and Grandma should go through the Netflix queue and decide what we're going to watch tonight. She still can't figure out how to work it by herself."

As soon as the cake was in the oven, Paige started making dinner. She could hear Emily and Hazel in the next room talking about what movies they should watch as she worked; the conversation was so adorable, it literally warmed Paige's heart.

"So, no  _Harry Potter_  then?" Emily asked.

"No. Definitely not. I'm sick of Harry Potter," Hazel replied.

"Well, I think we should watch something magical," Emily argued.

" _The Labyrinth_?" Hazel suggested.

"Mmmm, nah. I don't feel like looking at David Bowie's junk tonight," Emily decided.

"Neither do I, now that you mention it," Hazel agreed. "What about those Ewok movies?"

" _Star Wars_?"

"No, no. There was a whole spinoff series just about the Ewoks," Hazel told her.

"Oh, I didn't know that. No, I haven't," Emily replied. "Were they any good?"

Hazel made a noncommittal noise and Emily laughed.

"I don't know why I suggested those. How about  _Willow_? You've seen  _Willow_ , haven't you?" Hazel questioned again.

"Nope, haven't seen that one either."

"Well, put that one on the list! It's great."

There was a pause, during which Paige assumed Emily was writing down the name, then she said, "Okay. Got it."

"I know it's only been a couple weeks, but I'm gonna miss having you around here, honey," Hazel told Emily.

The non sequitur sentiment caught Paige off guard and she paused to listen more closely to the conversation.

"I'm going to miss you, too," Emily said, a tinge of sadness in her voice. "I really love it here."

"You'll keep an eye on Tuck for me, won't you?" Hazel said seriously.

"Of course. And you'll keep an eye on Paige for me?" Emily said.

"Maybe not as close an eye as you keep on her," Hazel chuckled, "but I'll make sure she stays on track."

They both laughed at that. "Deal," Emily agreed.

Paige's heart felt a bit heavier in her chest as she busied herself with dinner again, and try as she might she couldn't decide if that was a good thing.

* * *

For her first time cooking it, Paige didn't think she did too bad with the duck. She had been trying her hand at different proteins and wanted to make something special for New Years Eve. Hazel suggested a few things she could have done differently, but overall, everyone agreed that it was delicious. They spent most of the meal talking about pearl onions, though, Paige wasn't sure why. Tuck had insisted they discuss their merits in modern cuisine, claiming that talking about food more would help Paige become a better chef.

As soon as the dishes were all washed, something that went remarkably quickly when there were three people tackling them, all four settled into the living room. Tuck poured them all glasses of something he said was champagne, but Paige was sure wasn't. Who could afford real champagne? Not Tuck, that's for sure. And he seemed to have several bottles of it. Then they watched _Willow_ , followed by _Big_ —the real crowd pleaser. It didn't end up being much of a movie marathon, however, because after the second movie, Hazel saw that there were  _Carol Burnett Show_ reruns on, and she insisted they watch a few. They were having so much fun and laughing so hard, that they missed the ball dropping. Though, Paige thought that might have also happened because they were all tipsy from Tuck's champagne. Overall, Paige decided, as she snuggled into bed with Emily wrapped around her body, it had definitely been her favorite New Years Eve to date. She just wished her happy bubble didn't have to be popped.

* * *

It wasn't until after Emily and Tuck were gone, Paige and her parents having seen them both safely onto the bus that would take them back to Illinois, that Paige took a moment to actually look at the book safe Emily had made for her. She opened it up and pulled out everything inside of the hollow, counted the letters before she put them back to read at a later time, and put the CDs safely on her nightstand. Before she closed the book again, though, Paige noticed the poem that was on the last full page before the glued pages began. It could have just been a random page that Emily had flipped to, but Paige didn't think so. It wasn't like her to be so flippant, especially when it came to poetry. Emily had bookmarked one of her favorite poems for Paige after all, even if that wasn't the whole present. Whatever doubt Paige may have had that Emily didn't pick this poem out specifically was wiped away almost as soon as she began to read the lines.

_Those Winter Sundays  
by Robert Hayden_

_Sundays too my father got up early_  
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,  
then with cracked hands that ached  
from labor in the weekday weather made  
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

 _I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking._  
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,  
and slowly I would rise and dress,  
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

 _Speaking indifferently to him,_  
who had driven out the cold  
and polished my good shoes as well.  
What did I know, what did I know  
of love's austere and lonely offices?

When Paige fell asleep late that night she was still thinking about the poem and what it could possibly mean. What Emily was trying to tell her?


	52. Rue For You

Emily liked trains. Scratch that.

Emily loved trains. Her parents had met on a train. Okay, it was a commuter train. Still, as a result, she had always thought they were the most romantic form of transportation and always found herself very inspired to write whenever she had the fortune of riding on one. Today was no different.

She'd flown into Chicago that morning from Philadelphia, which was the airport nearest to Solomon, and then she'd caught the Amtrak at Union Station for the 3 and a half hour trip south.

Currently she was elbow deep in a poem she'd been working on for almost an hour, trying to work out a particularly tricky line. The conductor's voice startled her when it rent the silence of the compartment she was sitting in.

"Solomon! 10 minutes out!" he bellowed as he bent the tickets above the heads of everyone due off at the college town.

"Shit," Emily swore under her breath, glancing quickly out the window and catching the form of a few familiar church steeples cutting black silhouettes against the pale blue sky.

She'd completely lost track of time as she always did when she was writing. Papers, pens, and various empty food wrappers were scattered around her seat and on the floor. She hastily scrabbled them all together and stuffed the lot into her backpack before cramming her pocket dictionary and the Collected Poems of Elizabeth Bishop on top of it all. She unceremoniously wrapped the cord of her earbuds around her iPod and threw them into the front pocket with her journal and half-finished poem.

Then she began the laborious process her mother called "bundling," which just meant that she covered every exposed bit of skin on her body with a coat, hat, gloves, scarf, etc, etc, etc. Once she'd hoisted her backpack onto her shoulders, Emily made her way to the stairs at the middle of the car and headed down to where the larger bags were stored. Her own navy blue suitcase had been shoved behind three large duffle bags and it took her a few minutes to unearth it from the pile. Finally all that was left to do was wait for the train to stop.

 _Right_? Emily wondered, her eyebrows creasing in worry. An anxious feeling had started to churn in her chest. She felt like she was forgetting something, or like she wasn't ready. She felt for her phone in her jeans pocket. It was there. She could feel her billfold pressing uncomfortably against her butt, where she'd stowed it in her back pocket after buying her snacks. She knew she had her journal in her backpack and her Christmas presents from Paige packed safely in her suitcase. So why did she feel so unsettled all of a sudden?

As the train slowed and eventually stopped, Emily did her best to push the feeling aside, but it stayed with her as she walked home, her eyes watering from the bitterly cold wind that cut under all her layers of bundling.

* * *

Maybe if she hadn't been so distracted by her nervous thoughts, or if she'd have been able to see better out of the crack between her scarf and hat, she'd have seen Charlie launching herself from the staircase just to the left of the front door as she entered the house. As such, she was completely bowled over the moment she walked in the door, dragging her suitcase behind her.

Before she had even grasped what was happening, or registered Eden's concerned shout from the living room, Emily found herself sandwiched between her suitcase and Charlie, all three of them piled on the floor in the doorway between the hall and living room.

"Emily!" Charlie said in a delighted squeal, apparently unperturbed by their current predicament, and bombarding the tiny uncovered bit of Emily's with rather violent kisses. "You're back!"

"Charlie, get off her!" Eden huffed, appearing in Emily's line of sight as she wrapped her arms around her girlfriend's waist and hoisted her off of Emily and the suitcase. "Give her some room to breathe, for goodness sake!"

"Sorry," Charlie said, not sounding very sorry at all. She disappeared for a moment and Emily heard the sound of the front door being slammed shut before she reappeared in Emily's view, grinning widely.

Emily continued to lay on her back on top of her suitcase in a sort of daze. Finally, she managed to pull her scarf down enough that her mouth was free. Really taking in the sight of her two friends above her for the first time since she'd been flattened, Emily opened her mouth and said,

"Why are you in your underwear?"

"It's a leotard," Charlie corrected her, crossing her arms defiantly.

"No," Emily went on, peeling more layers off her body and sitting up a bit. "Leotards have that middle bit."

"Okay. Fine," Charlie amended. "I didn't have a leotard. It's a swimming suit."

"Wait," Emily said shrewdly, standing up as she removed her coat, and moving Charlie's arms from her chest, grabbing the material that was covering one of her boobs. "That's MY swimming suit!"

"Charlotte," Eden groaned, "you told me that was YOURS."

"I didn't have a black one!" Charlie whined. "I wanted to look professional."

"Well, that does make sense," Eden said, nodding seriously after she considered what Charlie had said for a few moments.

"No, it doesn'!" Emily said. "Give it back." She held out her hand to Charlie. "Come on."

"Why? You're not using it right now," Charlie pouted. "It's the middle of winter."

"It's the principle of the matter," Emily responded, working very hard to hold back a grin. "You should have asked first."

"Do you want me to just do it naked?!" Charlie asked dramatically, throwing her arms out wildly.

Emily shrugged, as if to say it didn't really matter to her. "What the hell are you even doing anyway, jumping off the stairs like that?"

"I'm working on my audition piece for tomorrow," Charlie explained.

"For Rep Term," Eden explained further when Emily just looked confused.

"Oh, right, I forgot about that," Emily said, turning and flopping down on the sectional. The trip to see Paige and travelling back to Solomon had driven it from her mind. Now, of course, she remembered that all of her friends were going to be participating in Rep Term. She'd be the only one of them not doing the intensive theatre term.

"So, see? I need it," Charlie said, pulling the straps of the swim suit so that it was fastened a bit more securely on her. It had become a little twisted up in the collision.

"Nope," Emily stated firmly, putting her hand back out. "Give it back."

"Em!" Charlie wailed, dragging the E out in a pitiful whine.

"Give it," Emily said again, twitching her fingers to indicate that she meant _right now._

"Fine!" Charlie huffed.

Eden had lost interest in their conversation some time ago and was pacing back and forth in the living room, muttering lines to herself and gesticulating in the way she only did when she was acting. She looked back over as Charlie began to peel the suit off, though. "You're going to do it naked aren't you?" she asked in a resigned sort of tone.

"I have no other choice," Charlie replied haughtily.

"I understand," Eden said gravely. "I appreciate your unwillingness to compromise your costuming standards."

"I appreciate your appreciation," Charlie said, now standing stark naked in the middle of the living room, winking at Eden who rolled her eyes.

"And I appreciate how weirdly perfect you two are for each other," Emily said carefully, still fighting not to burst out laughing, and taking the suit as Charlie handed it to her.

That was when the front door opened again, letting in a cold burst of air with it.

Jo walked in, closely followed by Liz.

It only took a second for both of them to notice that Charlie was completely naked. Liz blushed so furiously that Emily was worried her face was actually going to catch on fire, and ducked her head into Jo's shoulder, hiding her eyes. Jo, on the other just smiled broadly at her three best friends and said, "What are we doing?."

Charlie didn't stay naked for long. Liz was about two seconds away from a heart attack, even though she'd slept with Charlie two years ago and had already seen her naked. She insisted, from where her face was buried in Jo's shoulder, that it was different now.

Emily felt bad enough about the situation to allow Charlie to put her swimming suit back on. She knew that she, Eden, Charlie, and Jo were as close as friends could be; indeed, they felt more like family than friends to Emily. But poor Liz didn't deserve having to watch Charlie do some sort of naked acrobatics, especially not on her first night back on campus after winter break. She deserved a little time to warm back up to Charlie's particular brand of shamelessness.

The 5-some had a lovely first night back. Jo offered to buy pizza for everyone and they all, except for Emily, of course, took turns performing the monologues they'd prepared for the auditions the next day and gave each other critiques.

Eden was predictably amazing. She'd been working on her monologue, one of Ophelia's from _Hamlet_ , since the day she found out she'd been accepted into Rep Term. With a quick mental tally, Emily worked that out to be nearly 4 months. The work Eden had done on the piece showed. Eden may have been the most naturally talented actress at Vallance, but she also worked harder than anyone else at her craft. Emily had always admired that about her friend; she didn't just expect roles to be handed to her.

Liz's was a solid audition piece, too. She'd chosen a piece by a playwright Emily had not heard of before. The monologue was from the perspective of a girl whose mother had died when she was just a young child and her memory of that night. It involved marbles rolling across the floor and Liz was planning to actually do this when she auditioned, but didn't have them with her that night at The Log.

Charlie's audition piece wasn't so much a monologue as the strangest combination of poetry recital, interpretive dance, and gymnastics that Emily had ever witnessed. It was actually quite impressive. It left everyone speechless except for Eden, who had helped Charlie memorize The Jabberwocky and taught her how to do tiger rolls, handstands, and cartwheels. She applauded most heartily when Charlotte completed the last stanza while neatly landing a one-handed cartwheel.

Jo's monologue wasn't bad. It wasn't good, either. Jo just wasn't a performer. She was doing Rep Term to get the technical experience, but the rules were that everyone involved had to prepare an audition piece and act in one of the shows, even if they were only on stage for 5 minutes and had no lines. Jo was _hoping_ to get that kind of role. The idea that she might be cast as any kind of important character terrified her. When Liz was emphatic about the fact that she hadn't done nearly as bad as she thought, Jo cast a panicked, questioning glance around to her friends and only after 10 minutes of Eden, Charlie, and Emily ensuring her that the director would be crazy to give her a speaking role did Jo finally collapse in relief on the couch, the color slowly returning to her face.

It wasn't until much later, when Jo had left to walk Liz home around 10 pm, that the unsettling feeling Emily had been experiencing since departing the train returned. She, Eden, and Charlie were cleaning up the pizza boxes and cups from the living room when Eden stopped, slapping her hand to her forehead and declared, "Em, we've been so rude tonight! All we've talked about is Rep Term! What classes are you taking?"

"Oh, it's no big deal, Eden," Emily said, brushing off the apology. "I know you guys needed to have a dress rehearsal for tomorrow."

"Still," Eden countered, looking at her sincerely, "I'd like to know what you're taking."

"Yeah, Em," Charlie added. "It shouldn't have to be Rep Term shit 24/7 just because the rest of us are in it."

"You guys are sweet," Emily said, forcing a smile as her stomach churned unpleasantly with that feeling of dread. "Well, um, let's see...I'm taking the intro course for Gender and Women's Studies, Speculative Fiction, and a Nonfic Workshop that Professor Sutton said would be focusing on writing memoir pieces."

They all walked into the kitchen, arms full of trash and dishes, as they continued to talk.

"I took that Gender and Women's Studies class sophomore year," Eden chirped. "It was quite good. Very eye-opening. Who's teaching it? I had it with Williams."

"I'm not sure," Emily said, freezing momentarily as she finally remembered what she had been forgetting. "I'll have to…" She trailed off without finishing her thought.

"You okay, Em?" Charlie asked, moving around her to put the dishes in the sink and noticing Emily's expression as she did so.

Emily moved over to the tub in the corner by the pantry that they used as a recycling bin and dumped her arm load of pizza boxes into it. Her mind was racing, accompanied by her heart.

"I've just remembered…" Emily mumbled, not looking at either of her friends and hurrying back to the living room to grab her backpack and suitcase.

When she had returned to the kitchen both Charlie and Eden were looking at her with concerned expressions.

"What's up?" Eden questioned.

"Sorry," Emily replied, pulling open the door to her basement room. "I need to check something. I'll see you guys tomorrow."

And, with no further explanation, she moved down a few steps on the dark staircase and closed the door behind her.

Emily left her suitcase on the stairs. She didn't want to turn on the light, but she wasn't stupid enough to try to haul her heavy suitcase down the stairs in the dark. With just her backpack over one shoulder, she let her muscle memory move her down into her bedroom and over to her bed. Once she was sitting down on her mattress, she unzipped her backpack, felt her way past the paper of books and notebooks inside until her fingers hit the cool metal of her laptop, which she hurriedly pulled out and opened.

So far, Emily had been denied every loan she had tried to take out to pay the remainder of her tuition for the upcoming term. She'd been denied for one while she was staying with Paige and had subsequently applied for two more, thinking they might be more likely to grant her the money if she split the amount between two lenders. They were her last hope for the money she needed. She was supposed to have heard back from them by today. Emily got pop-up notifications on her phone anytime she received an email in her personal account, but she'd used her school email to apply for the loans. The lack of notifications, combined with a handful of other things like traveling, being horribly sad about having to leave Paige, and the poem she'd been writing, had driven the loans out of her mind. She had only just remembered them again.

The 15 seconds or so that it took her laptop to connect to the internet was excruciating, but finally the wifi signal flickered into life and Emily logged into her school email. Her eyes flicked past the few emails from her professors and something from the Dean of Student Affairs before she saw the two loan emails she was expecting. She clicked on the first one, feeling absolutely sick to her stomach as it opened and she started to read. Once she'd finished with the first, she opened the second and read it, too. It took less than a minute for her to learn her fate.

Denied. Again and again. The first lender cited a lack of credit history and the second said something about her income to debt ratio being too high. A numbness settled across Emily, like a thick fog that she could barely see past. She stared at the screen of the laptop resting on her knees without really seeing it.

 _What was she going to do?_ Emily couldn't seem to think past the question looping hypnotically through her brain. _What? What? What?_

Emily wasn't sure how long she sat there, hopelessness seeping into her bones in the dark of her room. Her laptop screen dimmed and eventually blinked out. Still Emily sat her, not moving, just staring into the dark until her eyes grew accustomed to it and she could make out the various shapes around her. Very slowly, through the fog clouding her brain she began to register a voice above her.

"'There's rosemary, that's for remembrance. Pray you, love, remember. And there is pansies, that's for thoughts. There's fennel for you, and columbines.'"

Emily felt like she was in a dream, or deep underwater. Words were falling down on her from the sky. Such heavy words they seemed, too, otherworldly. They would have to be heavy, Emily thought, to reach her at such a depth. She thought, for a moment, that she heard a whale's song arching through the ocean she was submerged in, very far away, but as it sounded again she realized it was only a train whistle.

"'There's rue for you, and here's some for me. We may call it herb of grace o' Sundays. O, you must wear your rue with a difference! There's a daisy. I would give you some violets, but they wither'd all when my father died. They say he made a good end.'"

Concentrating on the words, Emily realized it was Eden, running through her monologue a few more times before she went to bed. She listened to the emotion Eden was injecting into every word, praying that some of it might seep into her as well, but Emily only managed to feel very far away and she wondered fleetingly if a person could go into shock from bad news the same way they did when injured, adrenaline rushing through the body to mask the pain.

Finally, after Eden had repeated her monologue so many times that Emily thought she had most of it memorized, there was the sound of her footsteps on the stairs and nothing but the wailing of the train song to keep Emily company.

Only then did she wake her computer up and look again at the emails she'd received. They still said the same things. Despondently, Emily clicked back to her inbox and noticed the email from the Dean still unopened. The subject line read **Meeting Scheduled for January 3rd.** Emily's curiosity and dread were piqued again. That was the next day. And she had not requested a meeting with the Dean. That couldn't be good. Emily braced herself and opened the email.

Dear Miss Fields,

Nina Mendez, Dean of Student Affairs, has scheduled a meeting with you for January 3rd at 9am to discuss your tuition and the upcoming winter term. It is very important that you attend this meeting. If you have any classes during this time, we ask that you do not attend them, but come to this meeting instead. The meeting should last no longer than an hour and you do not need to bring anything with you. Thank you for your cooperation.

Sincerely,

Allen Sinclair  
Administrative Assistant for the Student Affairs Office

Emily was sure that this could only mean one thing. Her heart sank. The numb feeling she'd had since reading her loan emails was replaced by horrible sadness. Tears began sliding down her cheeks, faster and faster until Emily couldn't see through the stream of them. Just that morning she had woken up with Paige holding her tightly against her chest, their legs tangled together under the covers. She could almost still smell her hair and feel her stir as Emily had kissed her shoulders. Less than 24 hours ago everything had been perfect. And now, here she was, crying, all alone, and kicked out of Vallance most likely. Now everything was wrong. Choking back a sob, Emily pulled her phone out of her pocket. She had texted Paige to let her know that she had gotten back to school safely but they hadn't said much after that. Emily could tell Paige was sad that she was gone and also nervous about starting her classes the next morning at the community college. She had tried to console her, but Paige had just told her to enjoy the first night back with her friends and that they would talk the next day. Now, Paige was the only thing she wanted. She needed to talk to her. Emily wiped her eyes repeatedly until she could finally see her phone screen clearly and then she pressed Paige's contact on her screen and put the phone to her ear. It rang six times before it went to voicemail. Emily hung up and called again, crying even harder, but again, it went to voicemail. Throwing her phone down in frustration, she glanced back at her laptop to see what time it was. Paige was surely asleep. It was after 1 o'clock in the morning. She knew she couldn't really be mad at Paige, but she needed to hear her voice so badly and the fact that she couldn't made her feel like the world was crumbling apart.

With nothing else to do, Emily set her alarm for 8 am, closed her laptop, and crawled underneath the covers of her bed, which felt sort of stale after not being slept in for over a month. She couldn't bring herself to care, though. It was too small a thing to matter just now. She buried her face in her pillow and, feeling more alone than she ever had, Emily cried until she fell asleep.

* * *

Emily should have known she wouldn't need her alarm to wake her up. It was only 7:14 am when she was rudely awakened by the sound of her roommates thundering up and down the stairs above her and walking in and out of the kitchen. Usually they weren't so insensitive about the fact that Emily was literally under their feet, but today was audition day, and that meant all bets were off. Checking her phone, Emily saw that she had a text from Paige. It ready, "I'm sorry I missed your calls last night, babe. I'm heading to my first class now, but I'll call you on lunch, okay? Around 11 your time. I love you." Emily laid there, spooning her extra pillow, missing her girlfriend, and groaning for a good half hour before she admitted defeat and crawled out of her warm bed.

After getting dressed and unloading all but two books, a notebook, and her journal from her backpack, Emily headed upstairs. She didn't feel much like eating but out of habit she walked over to the fridge and opened it. She was expecting it to be empty, but it was absolutely jam-packed with all sorts of food. Charlie and Eden must have been shopping the day before. She noticed on the right hand side of the top shelf about 20 different single serving bottles of Naked Juice and grabbed a friendly orange-looking one before she headed into the dining room.

Eden was currently singing scales in between bites of granola, fruit, and yogurt. She added a "Good Morning!" in place of one of her "Do Re Mi"s and gave Emily a wide smile.

Beside her, Charlie was eating a very large bowl of Cocoa Puffs. Charlie had a pair of earbuds in and Emily could hear the music blaring through them. She was pretty sure it was Jay Z. Assuming Charlie had been the one to purchase most of the groceries, Emily waved a hand in front of her face and held up the bottle, mouthing, "Can I have this?"

"HELP YOURSELF," Charlie yelled in response, unaware of how loud she was actually being.

Jo was sitting opposite them both, staring despondently down at two plain pieces of toast.

Emily put a hand on her shoulder and Jo looked up at her.

"You going to eat those?" Emily asked gently.

"I'm having trouble chewing," Jo responded. There did seem to be a small nibble taken out of one of the corners, but the rest was untouched. "I really hate doing stuff like this."

"It'll all be over soon," Emily reassured her. "And the directors know you're not an actress. They won't give you anything but a tiny little part. You probably won't even have a line. I promise. You'll be okay."

Jo nodded and let out a long breath she seemed to have been holding.

"Here," Emily said, handing Jo the bottle of Naked Juice, "you need this more than I do."

Then, she leaned down and placed a kiss on Jo's forehead before leaning over the table and doing the same to Charlie and Eden, adding a "Break a leg," for each of them.

* * *

Vallance's campus was bright and cold that morning and there was still frost covering the bits of grass that fell in the shadows of the buildings Emily passed. She was still a bit early for her appointment with the Dean of Student Affairs, but she headed toward the old, brick building at the center of campus anyway. She was anxious to get this meeting over with.

It was a short walk and before she knew it, Emily was pulling open one of the large wooden doors of the bell-topped building and walking into the dim, quiet interior. On any other day, she probably wouldn't have even noticed the sound of the door thudding close behind her, but today it seemed rather ominous and she gave an involuntary little jump as the sound reverberated in the wide, empty entry hall. Most of Emily's writing classes were in this building, so she knew it well, and had passed by the Dean's office probably a hundred times.

The lights were already on inside the office, but Emily didn't go in yet. She sat down on one of the chairs that were lined up against the wall outside the office instead and pulled out one of the books in her backpack to pass the time. It was _The Will to Change_ by Adrienne Rich. Emily had not read it before, so she was going very slowly through it, reading carefully and trying not to miss anything. The poem she was on was titled, _The Burning of Paper Instead of Children_ , and Emily loved it already, just for the title alone. Soon, though, she loved it for much more than that, and by the time she reached the second section, she already felt that this would be one of her all time favorite poems. At the end of this section, though, she came across two lines that made her stop dead and look up from the book.

" _this is the oppressor's language_

 _yet I need it to talk to you_ "

Emily couldn't seem to make it past these lines. She read through the rest of the poem, but she kept returning, again and again to these two lines. They seem to be explaining something to her she had never quite understood until that very moment. She sat and read them over and over, thinking about what they meant until a voice called her name.

"Emily?" A man in khaki pants, a dress shirt, and tie was leaning out of the door, looking at her.

"Yes, that's me," Emily said, closing the book and returning it to her bag as she stood.

"Come on in," he offered kindly. "Dean Mendez will see you now."

"Thanks," Emily mumbled, following who she assumed to be Allen Sinclair, the administrative assistant.

The Dean's office was warm. It smelled like rich coffee and smooth, heavy cream. But there was not a hint of sweetness in the place.

"Ah, Miss Fields," Dean Mendez said, standing up and offering Emily her hand to shake. "I don't believe we've met before?"

"Uh, no," Emily confirmed as she took the woman's hand. "It's nice to meet you."

Nina Mendez looked about 45 years old. She had black hair peppered with grey that fell just below her shoulders and she was dressed in a grey pant suit, with a vibrant, red silk shirt. She was not wearing any jewelry and that fact seemed to comfort Emily for some odd reason.

"I'm sorry we're not meeting under more pleasant circumstances," Dean Mendez said, holding her hand out toward one of the two chairs in front of her desk. "Please, have a seat."

Emily sat down, gripping the front of the cushion with both her hands. "I'm…" she began, but had to stop to clear her throat before she continued. "I'm pretty sure I know why we're meeting, but just to be sure…"

The Dean gave her an understanding smile. "We've not received your tuition for the term."

"Right," Emily said, feeling even more anxious than she had when she had received the email the night before. "I'm really sorry about that. I've been working on it, very hard. I honestly have. I've been applying for loans for weeks, I've just...well, I haven't been approved for any of them."

"I'm sure that must have been very frustrating for you," the Dean supplied kindly. "I know how hard it can be to pay tuition each year, even when it's broken into payments by term."

Emily let out a small sigh and ran her hand through her hair. "Yes," she said simply before returning her hands to their bracing position at the edge of the seat cushion, determined to explain her plan. "But I'm going to keep applying and I can email you and keep you updated on the status of all the ones I apply for. I have some other family members I'm going to ask to co-sign for me. I'll let you know as soon as I've been approved for one. I'm not going to give up. I know one of them will approve me. "

Dean Mendez pursed her lips together as she listened to Emily. The expression wasn't harsh, though, it was empathetic, as if the woman knew exactly how Emily was feeling, pleading her case.

"I'm sorry, Emily," she spoke quietly, "but the tuition deadline for winter term is today. If you don't have some way of paying the remaining balance by midnight tonight, Vallance cannot allow you to take classes this term."

"Dean Mendez, please," Emily pleaded, "if I could just have...another week or so, I'm sure-"

"Emily," the Dean's voice was much stronger as she cut Emily off, but it softened again as she continued. "I'm sorry. It's not in my power to grant you that extension. Unfortunately, higher education is more than learning. It's a business. And businesses need money to run. I wish I could do more to help you, but I just can't. At this point, I'm here to discuss with you how to move forward as a Vallance student."

"You mean...you're not kicking me out?" Emily asked, a slight quaver in her voice.

"Not exactly," Dean Mendez went on. "As I said, Vallance can't allow you to take any classes, but if you intend to continue here-" the Dean raised her eyebrows at Emily who nodded, communicating that, yes, she did intend to continue being a student at Vallance, "then we can consider this taking a term off for personal hardship."

"Now," the Dean turned to her computer and placed a hand on the mouse, waking the screen up and clicking on a few things Emily couldn't see before typing something quickly and then returning to her clicking. "You live off campus, is that correct?"

"Yes," Emily confirmed. "I rent a house with some friends."

"That's good," the Dean said nodding and scrolling down what Emily now realized must be her official Vallance file.

"Why is that good?" Emily asked, feeling a bit foolish.

"Room and board is included in a tuition," the Dean responded without looking away from her computer screen. "Students who can't pay their tuition can't live in the school dorms."

"Oh, right," Emily said, feeling grateful for the first time during this conversation. At least she still had somewhere to live.

"I also need to inform you that while you are allowed to be on campus, you won't have access the services current students do," the Dean was looking at her again now, her tone rehearsed and formal. She must have given this schpiel many times.

Emily wasn't quite sure what she meant, however. The Dean seemed to gather this from her expression, because she said, "For example, you may go into the library, but you can't check out any materials. You can enter the cafeteria as a current student's guest, but your own Dining Services account has been suspended. If you wish to see any plays or performances, you'll have to buy a ticket to get in rather than just scanning your ID at the box office. If you have an on-campus job, you won't be able to work there for the time being."

"I see," Emily responded meekly.

"I know this all seems harsh," Dean Mendez offered, "but it's just for one term. If I were you, I'd get a job somewhere in town and spend this time continuing to apply for loans. If you'd like, the partial payment that's been made for this term can be applied to next term instead of being refunded to you."

"Okay, yeah, I'll do that," Emily said, thinking that at least she wouldn't have to explain to her parents why they were getting their money back.

"Very good," the Dean said, clicking a few things to mark that in Emily's file, then turning back to her once she had finished. "You know, this really is a very commonplace occurrence. Many students take a term or two off, for various reasons. Try not to be too discouraged. I took a look at your transcript and this shouldn't affect you much in the long run. You should still be able to graduate on time."

"That's...that's great," Emily said, forcing a smile. But she could tell she hadn't convinced the Dean of her sincerity, and she certainly hadn't convinced herself. Emily couldn't remember the last time her heart had felt so heavy.

* * *

When Emily walked back out into the cold morning, she wasn't quite sure what to do next. Her first thought was that she was hungry, and she considered going to get some breakfast in the cafeteria before she remembered that wasn't an option for her anymore. Then, glancing across the lawn at the library, she momentarily had the idea to rent a DVD to watch before she remembered that, too, was no longer a possibility. She had no job now. No classes to attend. No homework. No projects. No papers to write. Emily felt like she was molting. Vital parts of her identity were falling off her person and piling on the sidewalk at her feet. It was easy for Emily to imagine she could actually see feathers dropping silently around her as she stood there, immobile and unsure. The worst things in life were often the most poetic.

Eventually Emily walked back to The Log, albeit by a very circuitous route. The cold felt nice on her brain, almost like it was numbing the reality of her situation and giving her a few more minutes of denial before she needed to start processing what this all meant and what she was going to do now that she had nothing to do.

The house was empty when she got home. It was a relief. Emily didn't feel like explaining why she looked like a bomb had just gone off inside her skull. She threw her backpack down in the dining room and headed into the kitchen to forage for something in which to drown her sorrows. She wished that Paige was there. Paige would bake her a five layer cake and it would be so delicious that Emily would forget that anything bad had ever happened to her. As she thought about her girlfriend, the fact that Paige was supposed to call her sometime soon came back to her. She glanced at the clock on the stove. It was 20 minutes till 11. Emily sighed with relief. At least she would be able to tell Paige what was happening soon. Talking to Paige always made Emily feel less confused, more grounded, and just better, in general. With that in mind, she turned her attention back to finding something to eat.

Emily had just finished her second package of Wildberry Poptarts when her phone finally rang a few minutes after 11. She answered it quickly

"Babe?" Emily asked, waiting to hear her girlfriend's voice.

"Hey Em!" Paige replied, sounding exuberant. "I miss you!"

"I miss you, too," Emily said, feeling a physical ache in her chest.

"I just got out of my business class," Paige said quickly, "and my professor was so funny, Em, and he's super nice. We went over the syllabus, and at first I was kinda worried that it would be stuff I hadn't covered at Stanford or I wouldn't know what I was doing at all, but I recognized everything he said we'd be covering in this class."

The excitement in Paige's voice was evident. She was talking at top speed and Emily couldn't help but smile at how cute she was being. Emily knew Paige had been worried about taking her first business class at the Community College, and even though she'd had a horrible morning, she was glad, at least, that Paige's day was going well.

"That's wonderful, babe," Emily said. "I'm glad you're feeling good about it."

Paige let out a relieved sort of laugh. "God, I know," she chuckled. "And if my other three classes go as well, I should be finished with my degree by this summer since they require fewer classes than Stanford did. I'm just so... I really feel like I made the right decision, you know? And I'm so excited to get this all over with so I can go to culinary school."

"You are going to be the best chef," Emily told her.

"Pastry chef," Paige corrected her, but Emily could hear the smile in her voice.

"Right, of course," Emily amended. "Queen of All the Desserts."

"I love you," Paige said. "You're the best girlfriend."

"I love you, too," Emily replied, feeling incredibly thankful that she still had Paige, even when everything else was going wrong in her life.

"Sorry for all that word vomit," Paige laughed again. "I'm just really happy. How was your class?"

Emily took a breath and opened her mouth to tell Paige about everything that had happened- how she'd been turned down for all her loans and made to take a term off and now felt like she was floating by herself in an ocean on a raft that was falling apart- but she couldn't. Paige had had such a rough time lately with leaving Stanford and moving home to take care of her grandma. Emily didn't want to ruin this fresh start for her, not when Paige was feeling so optimistic about it. Not only that, Emily was suddenly feeling very self conscious about what had happened to her that morning. Now that it came time to actually tell Paige was what going on, she was downright embarrassed about the fact that she and her parents couldn't afford to pay her tuition for the term. She wasn't feeling good about herself at all.

"Em, you still there?" Paige's voice sounded slightly concerned, bringing Emily back out of her thoughts.

"Yeah, sorry," Emily said quickly.

"How was your class?"

"It was fine," Emily said offhandedly. "Not much to tell. Tell me more about yours. What's your teacher's name?"

"His name is Chad Coatney," Paige explained. "But he said we can call him Chad. Oh, I almost forgot, he told this joke about an artichoke. It was great. Hold on, let me remember how it starts..."

Emily only felt slightly guilty as she listened to Paige tell her the joke and then continue to talk all about her class and professor and how excited she was to go home and tell Grandma Hazel how it had all gone over dinner. Emily didn't want to lie to Paige, but she was just feeling so terrible and unsure about everything and she almost couldn't bear the thought of Paige trying to make her feel better, not when she didn't even know what she was going to do. Emily decided she would give herself a few days to get a plan together and find a job somewhere and then she would come clean to Paige about having to take a term off from Vallance. She would tell her in a week or two, at most- as soon as she had a shred of self respect back. She didn't want her girlfriend to think less of her.

"Are you sure you don't want to tell me about your class?" Paige's voice once again interrupted her from her thoughts. "Which one did you have this morning?"

"It was...uh...the Speculative Fiction class," Emily made up, hating herself a little as she did. She didn't want to lie to Paige, but she just felt so embarrassed about her situation. "All we did was read through the syllabus. You know how first days are. We got out early."

"It's always nice to get out early," Paige commented. "Have a little free time."

"Yeah…" Emily replied, her tone grave. "I have a feeling I'm going to have a lot of free time this term."


	53. In Need of Naps

The bedroom door burst open, scaring Paige so badly she nearly fell off of her desk chair. Rather than fall, she was able to right herself by doing a sort of undignified hop, which left her a few feet away from the desk.

"Are you sure you're an athlete?" Adrienne asked closing the door again behind her as she waltzed into the room. "Shouldn't you be more graceful?"

"Shh!" Paige shushed her sharply before she continued in a whisper. "Emily is sleeping."

Adrienne's eyebrows creased in confusion as she quickly looked around Paige's room. Seeing absolutely no one, she started to ask, "Wha-" but Paige cut her off with one finger over her lips and the other pointing at her laptop, which was open on the desk.

Emily's face was framed in the silver casing of Paige's computer. And as Paige had said, she was fast asleep, mouth slightly open and breathing heavily.

"You've got to be kidding me," Adrienne huffed, in a slightly softer tone.

Paige pursed her lips and rolled her eyes, then moved quickly over to Adrienne, grabbed her by the upper arm and steered her quickly into the bathroom, shutting the door behind them both.

"What are you doing here? We didn't have any plans tonight."

"Sorry," Adrienne said. She sounded genuine, but Paige never could tell with her. "I got off my shift a little early so I came by to see if you wanted to hang. Your grandma let me in. What's the big deal?"

"Emily and I have a Skype date tonight," Paige stated, still irritated. "And I'm already behind on my homework from yesterday because I let you drag me to the bar."

Adrienne stared at Paige for a moment, her eyes wide. It was clear from her expression, she thought Paige was losing it. "Dude. She's _asleep_."

"So?" Paige retorted.

"Seems like a pretty shitty date." Adrienne shrugged and leaned back against the counter.

"Shut up," Paige said, real fire in her eyes now. "Emily has had a rough few days, and if she needs to rest, then I am more than happy to let her sleep. I don't need her to entertain me. I'm happy just to spend time with her."

"This is exactly why I don't do relationships," Adrienne replied.

"That's fine. That's your choice," Paige said. "But you don't get to act like I'm nuts because being in one makes me happy."

"Alright, alright," Adrienne said, putting her hands up to show she was surrendering the argument. "I don't want to fight with you, okay? I'm just bummed you don't want to hang out."

Paige relaxed a bit, her shoulders un-tensing now that she didn't need to be on the defensive. "You know I like hanging out with you, but now that I'm in school, I just can't do it as often. You already have a career. I'm still trying to figure mine out."

"I get it," Adrienne said. "Nursing school was a bitch. I only had time to go out like 4 times a week."

Paige ignored the sarcastic comment and went on, "And I want to be around more at night for Em. Something's been going on with her. She seems...depressed or something. I don't know."

"What do you mean?" Adrienne asked.

Before Paige could answer, though, the sound of Emily's sleepy voice could be heard calling out from the bedroom. "Babe?"

Paige immediately reached for the door handle, opened it, and made her way through the room and back over to the desk where her girlfriend's face was peering out of the open video chat. "Hey, sleepy head," Paige grinned. Her entire demeanor had changed from the conversation she had been having in the bathroom. Her tone was soft and warm and comforting.

"Where'd you go?" Emily asked, rubbing her eyes adorably.

"Adrienne showed up unexpectedly," Paige explained. "I took her into the bathroom to talk so we wouldn't wake you."

"Oh," Emily said. "Do you need to go?"

"No," Paige answered. "Not at all. I was just throwing her out."

"She was," Adrienne piped up as she headed toward the bedroom door. "Sorry to interrupt you two lovebirds. Text me when you wanna do something, Paige."

"'Kay," Paige answered with a small wave of her hand, still staring at Emily's face on the screen. She didn't even look up as she threw out a "bye."

Adrienne paused at the top of the stairs, just for a moment, looking carefully at Paige, who was completely enraptured with her barely conscious girlfriend. The corners of Adrienne's mouth turned down almost imperceptibly as she took in the sight, but she turned her head sharply and was gone before Paige had even started to tell Emily how much she wished she could kiss her.

* * *

It had been four days and Emily hadn't found a job yet. Nor had she been able to bring herself to tell Paige about her forced leave of absence from Vallance. She hadn't told anyone about it, as a matter of fact. Each morning she got up, got dressed, ate a single granola bar for breakfast, and pretended to leave for class. Sometimes the other girls were up and about, getting ready for their respective days, but sometimes it was just Emily. The only difference during the mornings on which Emily was alone was that she didn't have to walk around the block before heading into town to make it look like she was going to campus. She wasn't even sure why she was doing it. She just had a burning need to keep this secret, to keep the shame her own and not let anyone else see it. She sometimes felt like she was over complicating things whenever she thought about her situation and how she felt about it, which was nearly constantly. In the end, her thoughts always led her down to the same solid foundation: embarrassment. And the longer she kept it a secret, the more daunting it seemed to tell anyone. She tried to convince herself that once she found a job she wouldn't feel so awful about the whole thing, but there was a kernel of doubt in her mind that she couldn't shake off.

Later that night, after she and Paige had finished their date, Emily was just beginning a Google search for jobs in town when there was a knock at the top of the basement stairs. Her door was open, which meant that the person standing the shadowy doorway was certainly Jo. Eden and Charlie rarely knocked when the door was closed and never when it was open.

"Hey," Emily called up, shutting her laptop quickly in case Jo came down. "What's up?"

"Do you want to have a beer with me?" Jo asked. "If you're not busy?"

"Sure," Emily answered. "I could use a drink."

"Have your classes been hard?" Jo inquired after Emily had climbed the stairs and joined her in the kitchen.

"Just a rough few days," Emily said dismissively.

Jo grabbed the six pack of Budweiser she had bought off the counter and led Emily into the living room.

"Holy shit," Emily whispered, her eyes going wide as they walked into the room. "Charlie wasn't fucking around."

"I know," Jo agreed, chuckling. "It's like the inside of a Christmas tree in here."

Charlie had apparently "rescued" an old box full of Christmas lights over the break that her mother was planning to throw away. The night before, when Emily had gone to bed Charlie was climbing on various furniture with a hammer and mouthful of nails, tacking them in wherever she could reach. Now there were about 30 strands swirling and zigzagging and twisting all over the walls and ceiling of the room. It was absolute chaos, but it was also kind of magical.

"It looks TERRIBLE when they're off," Jo commented kicking off her boots and settling down on the couch under an electric blanket. "But this is definitely cool." She leaned her head back against the sofa, soaking in all the colors twinkling and swirling around the room.

"Yeah," Emily said, grinning and turning in place so she could take in all 360 degrees of the room before she sat down. She let out a laugh, feeling marginally lighter than she had for the past few days.

Jo pulled up a side of the blanket and Emily gladly joined her underneath it. The Log was maybe not the best-made house. It was drafty and in the winter the house seemed nearly impossible to keep warm, especially at night. That's why they always kept three or four electric blankets out on the sectional. Emily was careful after she had sat down cross-legged beside Jo to tuck the blanket around her toes.

"When I buy my first house," Jo mused as she used the opener she kept on her keyring to uncap two of the beers, "it's going to have a fireplace in every room. 3 layers of insulation in the walls. And no windows."

"You could just move somewhere warm," Emily suggested. "California, Florida…"

"The sun," Jo finished for her, taking a giant gulp from her bottle.

"There you go," Emily laughed.

The two lapsed into a comfortable silence, shoulders touching, knees touching under the blanket. Emily wasn't sure how long they sat there just drinking and not talking. Time seemed to slow. Somewhere in the middle of her second beer, Emily started to feel warm and syrupy, like she was sinking into the leather of the couch. It was lovely.

"I had a brother, you know," Jo stated, more to the universe than to Emily.

In fact, Jo wasn't looking at Emily at all. She seemed lost in thought.

There were pictures on Jo's bedroom wall that Emily had noticed over the years, family portraits from when Jo was very small. Emily knew that her mother had died when Jo was a teenager, but she'd never spoken of her brother in the three years that Emily had known her.

"He died when he was 10. In the summer. He drowned," Jo went on.

"Oh, Jo," Emily muttered quietly under her breath without meaning to speak at all.

"It was so long ago, that sometimes, it doesn't seem real. He doesn't feel real. Or maybe...it's like I'm not sure what parts of him were real anymore. I still think about him so often, but it's not memories. It's always abstract. I wonder about him, about what he would have been like now. I imagine what it would be like if he were here. But it's...that's not really him. Not who he was, you know? I always hated when people would tell me that I could keep his memory alive. God that would piss me off. Because memories aren't alive. They aren't the real thing. They're just…" Jo trailed off and took another drink of her beer.

"What do you think he'd be like?" Emily asked.

Jo turned to her finally, and Emily was a bit surprised to see that she was smiling.

"I think he'd drink beer," Jo answered. " I think we'd drink together like this."

"What was his name?" Emily asked then, accepting the new bottle Jo handed to her.

"Jonathan," Jo told her quietly and Emily thought the name sounded a bit brittle. "But…"

"What?" Emily encouraged her friend when Jo shook her head slightly.

"I just think he would have started going by Nathan, eventually. Maybe in high school. He always hated when people called him Jon."

"To Nathan, then," Emily said raising her bottle just slightly.

"Mmmm," Jo hummed in agreement, but she didn't say his name again before clinking her bottle against Emily's.

They both drank.

Emily was expecting that they would both lapse back into silence but Jo spoke again just a few seconds later.

"They posted the cast list after classes this afternoon."

Emily had completely forgotten that was happening today, she'd meant to text the girls and ask which parts they'd been cast as.

"And?" Emily prodded, her eyebrows raised.

"Eden is the mother, Hannah Pitt, in Part 2 and Charlie is the Angel in Part 2. They get to make out on stage. They're both very pleased." Jo chuckled dryly. "Oh, and Tuck was cast as Prior, of course. We all knew he'd get that."

Emily pressed, "But, who are you? Is it a speaking role?"

Jo took a long drink and let out a deep sigh before answering.

"I'm the doctor, Henry," Jo told her. And after a pregnant pause, added, "They cast me as a man, Em."

"Well, that's...that's okay," Emily said cautiously, trying to read Jo's mood before she said anything more.

"He has a lot of lines, " Jo said, and Emily thought she looked a bit green, but a moment later she still managed to throw back the rest of her beer in a few desperate gulps. "For me, I mean. It's a lot of lines."

"I can help you," Emily stated without missing a beat. "We all will. We'll go over it until you can say them in your sleep. Don't worry."

"I feel kind of weird, Em," Jo whispered. "I feel…"

"Drunk?" Emily supplied, trying to lighten the mood of whatever was happening.

Jo looked at her finally, face so crumpled with concerned that Emily actually felt a little scared.

"Can I sleep with you tonight?" Jo asked. Her eyes were glistening slightly and Emily thought she might start crying at any moment.

"Of course," Emily answered, worry for her friend growing by the second.

"Can we go to bed now?" Jo sounded like she was pleading with her.

"Yes." Emily stood up quickly and found she was a bit dizzy but ignored the feeling. She set their bottles on the coffee table, switched the blanket off, and then held out both of her hands to Jo.

Jo placed both of her hands into Emily's, closing her eyes as she did so, taking in a long, shaky breath. Emily pulled her up, wrapped an arm around her waist, and led her it of the room. Neither of them stopped to turn the lights off.

Down in the basement, Emily found a simple t-shirt and pair of shorts for Jo to change into. She knew her friend well enough to occupy herself while Jo stripped off her clothes. Emily pulled the various open and dog-eared books and laptop off her bed, making sure her back was to Jo as she changed. After the detritus was removed, she attempted to straighten her sheets and comforter out, giving the blanket a good shake to make sure there were no crumbs on it. Emily felt as if she'd been decomposing the past few days and her bedroom looked accordingly. She continued to worry over the state of the bed until Jo came around and climbed into the other side.

Emily was already wearing her pajamas. She'd changed into them as soon as she gotten home from that day's wash of a job search, so all she had to do was click off the lamp beside her bed.

The room felt a bit like a tomb, Emily thought, chilly and pitch black and silent. She didn't want it to feel like that, but it did. She wondered if Jo felt it. She turned to try and see her friend, who she knew was just beside her on the queen size mattress, but her eyes had not yet had enough time to adjust to the dark. She couldn't even make out the shape of Jo. She wanted to try to get a read on her, which was difficult in broad daylight sometimes, but it seemed nearly impossible now that she couldn't see her face. Emily had a feeling, though, that Jo wasn't feeling like talking anymore, so instead, Emily scootched over until she located Jo's body.

"Roll over," she instructed and felt Jo move on to her side so that her back was toward Emily.

Emily scooted a bit more and situated herself behind Jo as the big spoon, her right arm wrapped around Jo's waist.

"Okay?" she asked simply.

"Okay," Jo responded, giving Emily's hand a squeeze.

With that, Emily closed her eyes and before long, fell asleep.

* * *

Emily woke up the next morning when someone turned on her overhead light. She shut her eyes more tightly and groaned, trying to burrow into her blankets. She thought it was probably Jo getting up, but then the light-turner-oner flopped down in the bed next to her and Emily knew it was Charlie from the smell of her shampoo. She cracked open one eye and sure enough, there was Charlie, grinning widely at her, her slightly damp brown hair fanned out over Emily's pillow.

"Hi," Charlie chirped.

"What time is it?" Emily mumbled.

"7:45 am."

"Why are you in my bed?" Emily wondered aloud.

"Well, first of all," Charlie said, much louder than necessary considering they were nose to nose. "I can't believe you had a sleepover and didn't invite me. I could understand if you didn't want Eden to come because she's a complete blanket hog and sometimes sings in her sleep, but I am a contentious and generous bedfellow. You can ask anyone."

"Eden told me you drool," Emily smirked, her eyes still closed.

"Well that is just ludicrous," Charlie huffed, "and shame on you for believing her."

"She thinks it's cute," Emily went on, "the way you sleep with your mouth wide open."

"I'm sure it's adorable," Charlie stated, without a hint of sarcasm, "but you're steering us off topic, Em."

"My apologies," Emily responded, opening her eyes in earnest now. "You have the floor."

"Thank you," Charlie continued. "As I was saying...um...oh yeah! Tuck is mad at you."

"What? Why?"

"Because we've been back at school for like a week now and he hasn't seen you or spoken to you."

"Well, I haven't seen him or spoken to him, either!" Emily retorted, her argument not quite as eloquent as it might have been if she was fully awake.

"He said he sent you three texts and you never responded." Charlie shot her down.

"Oh...yeah, he did," Emily admitted, remembering now Tuck's multiple attempts to contact her. She'd been so preoccupied and desperate to get a job, that she'd completely forgotten to respond to him each time he'd reached out. "I suck."

"We've got our first rehearsal tonight now that everyone's been cast," Charlie informed her, "but after that Tuck is coming over and we're going to celebrate being the coolest people on the planet and you can beg his forgiveness then, okay?"

Emily rubbed her eyes distractedly and felt the familiar sensation of dread settle into her stomach, as it had since her first day back on campus, now coupled with the guilt of having ignored one of her best friends. She sat up and let her head fall into her hands.

"Em?" The usual joking lilt in Charlie's voice had given way to a more serious tone. "Are you alright? You know Tuck's not really mad at you, right? He just wants to see you."

"I...I know. But I still feel bad," Emily responded, dodging the inquiry.

Charlie didn't look exactly convinced, but Eden called out to her just as she was opening her mouth to say something.

"We've gotta go!" Eden shouted from the hall above.

"We'll be home around 9 tonight, okay?" Charlie said as she took off for the stairs. "And we left you some french toast on the stove. We used this loaf of Challah Eden picked up and it's so fucking good, Em. You have to try it! See you tonight!"

Charlie dashed up the stairs, taking them two at a time, and was gone before Emily even had time to shout a quick thank you to her. She heard the front door creak open and then slam shut and the house was silent once again.

* * *

A few states to the east, Paige was just starting to cook breakfast for herself and Grandma Hazel. She could hear her grandmother futzing about in the breakfast room but didn't go to check on her as she would have only a couple of months ago. Hazel had been improving steadily since she'd been released from the hospital November. Her dedication to doing her rehab exercises each day had really paid off and, with the help of her walker, she could now sit, stand, and move from room to room by herself. She couldn't remain standing for very long or do any of the household chores anymore, but she could dress and even shower on her own while sitting in the shower chair the doctor had prescribed for her. Paige still insisted on helping her into and out of the shower because it was such a big step, but other than that, she felt comfortable allowing her grandmother to be as independent as possible.

Paige was just beginning to fry the first few pancakes when she heard the telltale sounds of Hazel's approach; the crinkly, plastic rolling of two small wheels, the soft drag of the tennis balls that covered the two back legs of the walker, her grandmother's shuffling house slippers, and the quiet puffing rhythm that Haze's had begun to breathe in since she started using the walker.

"Could you grab the juice from the icebox, dear?" Hazel asked. "I can't taste the pills as much as when I take them with water."

Hazel made a grimacing face as she caught Paige's eye, making her laugh.

"You know, these are called refrigerators now," Paige teased as she grabbed the bottle of orange juice and moved to the cabinet to get out two glasses.

"Old habits die hard," Hazel mused and gave her granddaughter a little pinch on the arm as came up beside her.

"Ouch!" Paige laughed.

"Don't sass your grandma!" Hazel chuckled.

"Okay, okay," Paige surrendered, handing Hazel her morning pills and then the glass of juice.

She waited dutifully for Hazel to swallow the pills, then took the rest of the juice, along with her own glass through to the table in the breakfast room.

"Pancakes are burning," Hazel said, moving over to the range and picking up the spatula, turning the pancakes over almost as easily as Paige remembered her doing on so many mornings of her childhood.

"I'll get that, you sit down." Paige hurried back over to the stove and surveyed the pancakes. They were a bit past what one might consider "golden brown." Hazel handed over the spatula and made her way back to the table, easing herself into the wooden chair in which she always sat. For Christmas, Paige had bought a thick memory foam cushion covered in yellow fabric to replace the flat, pale pink one that she was sure Hazel had been sitting on since before Paige had been born.

Paige smiled broadly as she heard Hazel lower herself into the chair and huff happily, "It's like sitting on a cloud!" She commented on the wonder that was memory foam at least once a week and Paige had already purchased a pair of memory foam slippers for Hazel's birthday that summer. They were tucked away in her closet upstairs. Paige couldn't wait to hear her ooh and ahh over them when she gave them to her.

Paige continued to amuse herself with thoughts of the slippers as she finished cooking the pancakes and loaded them onto two plates.

"These look delicious," Hazel remarked when Paige set a plate down in front of her.

"Thank you," Paige replied. "I learned from the best."

"Speaking of which," Hazel said, "I think it's time I pass this on to you." She reached over and picked up the small, metal recipe box that was sitting near her on the table. It was often out and about, in and around the kitchen when she was growing up, so Paige hadn't given it a second thought when she'd seen it on the table that morning. She'd thought Hazel might ask her to cook a certain recipe or teach her one they'd never made together before, but give her the entire box? Her grandma might have been handing her a box full of gold, as far as she was concerned.

"My days of cooking are over, honey," Hazel told her. "You're the one doing all the meals around here now. It only seems right. I want you to have it."

Hazel picked the box up now and placed it in Paige's hands. It was a careworn object, for certain, but still beautiful, Paige thought. She'd often admired it as a child. It was painted yellow with a plum tree design. The branches wound around the top and sides, heavy with their purple fruit. On the top, the word Recipes was painted in black cursive.

"My mother gave that to me as a wedding present," Hazel explained as Paige opened the lid and began to look through the recipe cards inside. "She wrote out some of our family recipes so I could make them for Frank."

"Are they still in here?" Paige asked, amazed.

"Sure are," Hazel answered. "That's mother's handwriting there." Hazel pulled out a card that said "Brisket" at the top and Paige carefully read through the recipe. It was a bit difficult to make out some of the words, but she got the gist of it.

Paige also recognized Hazel's writing among the cards, her own mother's, aunts, and even what looked like might have been her father's handwriting from when he was much younger.

"Thank you so much, Grandma. This is incredible." Paige couldn't think of what else to say.

"You're very welcome," Hazel smiled. "And be sure to share that with Tuck if he ever feels like making more than a sandwich."

"I will," Paige chuckled. "I'll make him help me sometimes." She was still holding the recipe for brisket and she angled it toward her grandmother now, asking. "Could we make it this weekend?"

"Only if you finish your homework first, young lady," Hazel retorted in a faux stern voice, waving her finger. Then she added in an undertone, "And you pick out a dessert to make, too." She gave Paige a wink.

"Deal!" Paige blurted out happily. She stuck out her hand so that they could shake on it, but Hazel grabbed her by the face and pulled her in, giving her a loud kiss on the cheek.

* * *

"You want a job." The small, balding man sitting behind the counter was staring at Emily like she was crazy.

"Yes," Emily answered. "If you have any openings."

"You want a job," he said again in a monotone. "Here." At this, he gestured around the large room, which was completely devoid of any people.

"Um…" Emily hesitated, looking around at the rows and rows of DVDs that were displayed neatly on the metal shelves that filled the building. "Yes?"

"No one rents DVDs anymore," Richard, as his nametag read, explained to Emily in a tone that clearly indicated he thought she was an idiot and he might next have to tell her that the sky was blue.

"Right," Emily replied tersely. "Sorry to waste your time."

"If you can make people start renting movies again, I'd love to give you the job," Richard went on, throwing his arms wide. "Hell, you can take the damn place over if you can manage that."

Emily didn't bother responding, she just gave the man a small nod and forced smile and headed toward the exit, pulling the hood of her coat back up and over her ears. The video store had been her tenth stop of the day inquiring about open positions. She hadn't really expected to find a job there, but she was desperate and freezing cold. She'd mostly gone in because her toes were starting to go numb, and once she was inside she'd figured she might as well ask. That had clearly been a mistake. She should have just perused the videos until she warmed up.

As she stepped outside a frigid blast of wind caught her full in the face, taking her breath away. She lowered her head and walked as quickly as she could down the street to the next establishment, not really bothering to look up at the building or the sign as she pushed open the door and moved into the warmth.

"Welcome to Dairy Queen," a polite, chipper voice greeted Emily as she pulled off her hood again and looked up, meeting the eyes of the middle-aged woman standing behind the counter. "What can I get for you?"

Emily knew what the answer would be before she asked it, but forced herself to ask it nevertheless. "Are you hiring, by any chance?"

"No, not right now," the woman said, leaning over and resting her elbows on the counter. "Come back in May if you're still looking. That's when we really start getting busy. We just operate with a skeleton crew in the winter."

"May," Emily repeated dejectedly. "You don't sell coffee here, do you?" she went on, hoping for something that might warm her up a bit.

"Sure, we sell coffee," the woman said, though she made no move to stand up and enter the order on the register, and Emily understood why when the woman cocked one of her eyebrows up and finished by saying, "but it's all ICED."

Emily let out a long sigh, her shoulders dropping, every bone in her body aching. "Can I just...sit down for awhile?"

"Knock yourself out," the woman replied, gesturing at the empty red booths spaced evenly around the restaurant.

Emily slumped gratefully into the booth nearest to her, folded her arms on top of the table, laid her head down, and tried very hard not start crying in the middle of the Dairy Queen.

She woke up abruptly when someone shook her shoulder.

"Hey, lady," a teenage boy was standing beside Emily.

"W-what?" Emily stuttered out, casting her eyes around, completely disoriented. It was dark outside.

"We thought you might be dead," the guy told her. "My manager sent me over to tell you that you need to leave now."

Emily looked over at the counter where the same woman was standing, but now her arms were crossed and she didn't look amused or friendly in the slightest.

"When I said 'Knock yourself out' it was an expression," the woman called over to her.

"Sorry," Emily muttered, scooting out of the booth. She was mortified. She couldn't believe she'd fallen asleep in Dairy Queen. What was the matter with her?

She made a beeline for the door, intent on getting out of there as quickly as possible and never, ever, showing her face there again.

"Hey!" the woman shouted at her. "Hold on a second. Come here."

Emily turned around to face her but hesitated. The woman must have noticed because she unfolded her arms and made a placating gesture. "I'm not gonna bite you, hun."

Emily walked up to the counter, not sure what to expect, trying to look as confident and dignified as her current predicament would allow.

"A girlfriend of mine works over at the Calico Cat," the woman began. "It's that little knick knack shop over on Sycamore, just past Arnaz's Pub, across from the train station. She told me they're looking for a girl to run the jewelry counter during the day. If you're interested, go over tomorrow around 10 am and ask for Shonda. Tell her you're the girl who fell asleep in the Dairy Queen. She'll know who you are."

"She will?" Emily questioned, her eyes wide and confused.

"I texted her a pic of you when you fell asleep. We got to talking and we both feel kinda sorry for you," the woman explained.

Emily couldn't believe what she was hearing. "Oh my god," she stammered. "Seriously? Thank you! Thank you so much!" She made a move toward the woman, wanting to hug her, to show her, somehow, what this meant and how grateful she was, but the woman stepped back and held up her hands.

"Hey, why don't you just order some chicken fingers or something," the woman suggested.

"Oh, yeah," Emily said, trying to calm down. "Sorry. Um," Emily scanned the menu. "I'll have the bacon cheeseburger meal. Please."

The woman cocked an eyebrow at her. She seemed to be waiting for something.

"To go," Emily added quickly.

"Mmmhmmm," the woman agreed and put her order into the register.

* * *

Thankfully, the house was still dark when Emily got home. She didn't want to have to explain why she was walking in with a bag of cold Dairy Queen food and the imprint of her coat sleeve still fading off the side of her face from her two and half hour nap.

Emily spent an hour or so eating her burger and texting with Paige, who wanted Emily's help deciding what dessert she should try out that weekend from her "new" box of old family recipes. After Paige had explained a few of the things she was itching to try out, they decided on Black Bottom Cupcakes, which were chocolate sponge on the bottom and a sour cream vanilla sponge on the top. Paige also sent her a few selfies of her and Grandma Hazel hanging out and studying on the couch together and making silly faces. They made Emily's heart ache for what the future might hold for them and terrified that she was screwing it up even now. But Paige looked so happy and she was so excited to spend the weekend cooking and Emily put off telling her girlfriend about her troubles for another day. Next week, Emily promised herself as she and Paige set up a cooking Skype date for the following afternoon. She would tell Paige everything next week.

After that Emily did a quick clean up of the living room, throwing about 10 pairs of discarded shoes into the hall closet and picking up trash. She had to make three trips to the sink with tottering piles of dirty dishes but didn't have the energy to wash them. Instead, she collapsed on the couch and helped herself to the leftover beer she and Jo had abandoned the night before. One of the bottles was open and only half finished and there was another which was unopened. Emily finished them both and then went back to the kitchen and looked in the freezer for more alcohol. She just wanted to get to that warm, happy place that happened right before she got truly drunk. That's what she told herself anyway, that she just wanted to forget her troubles for awhile. It was Friday night after all. In a moment of foresight, she set an alarm on her phone for 9 am to make sure she'd have time to get over to the Calico Cat by 10 the next morning. Then she poured herself a shot of whiskey.

* * *

"My friends are here!" Emily yelled when the front door opened and let in a gust of terribly cold wind but also her 4 best friends. She maybe, _probably_ , was already past that warm, buzzed place and just plain drunk. "My thespian friends!" Emily shouted. Then added, a look of delight on her face, "And my lesbian friends! Friend," she clarified, flouncing over to the group and poking Jo in the stomach. "I'm a lesbian friend," she added then, poking herself in the stomach. "We are two."

"Well, I was intent on being mad at you tonight," Tuck announced as everyone peeled off their coats, hats, and gloves, "but you're clearly already drunk and acting adorable so the effect would be lost on you."

"I love you, tooooo!" Emily cooed and threw her arms around him, throwing him off balance so that his focus was shifted toward the ceiling.

"What the fuck happened in here?" Tuck asked staring up at all the Christmas lights crisscrossing above him, Emily's arms still wrapped around his neck.

"I happened!" Charlie shouted. She was loud even when she wasn't intoxicated.

"She's a very happening gal," Eden confirmed. "I'm ordering pizza. What do you guys want?"

Everyone chorused out what toppings they wanted, Charlie demanding stuffed crust, Emily begging for black olives, Jo politely requesting a plain cheese, and Tuck suggesting a meat lovers, which just resulted in Charlie screaming "You love penis!" until Jo went and retrieved the tequila just to shut her up. Eden, of course, thought they should order veggie pizzas, and soon she had lapsed into an explanation of how bell peppers come in male and female varieties and you can tell which is which based on how many lobes they have. No one believed her and everyone was unnaturally quiet for about 15 minutes while they all researched bell peppers on their phones, during which time, Eden snuck away and ordered the pizzas, which meant they were all going to be vegetarian. So they decided that for her penance Eden had to take three shots of tequila and wash enough plates for them to eat on. Eden was happy to do the shots, but rather than washing the dishes, she whispered something into Charlie's ear that had the twofold effect of making Charlie's eyes go as big as saucers and causing her to scurry off to the kitchen to wash the dishes.

"You are so powerful," Emily said in awe as Charlie ran out of the room.

"I am," Eden agreed, nodding sagely. The tequila may have been starting to take effect.

"But you were wrong about the peppers," Emily told her very seriously. "Peppers are genderless beings."

"Ah, but maybe I knew that already," Eden said in a flowy voice, "and I only made the claim to distract you all long enough to order the pizzas that I wanted."

"You inspire me," Emily told her, "every day."

"I know," Eden replied.

"I am way too sober for this nonsense," Jo mused, rolling her eyes and following Charlie into the kitchen, presumably to pour herself a much-needed drink.

By the time the pizza arrived, which turned out to be two large veggies and one plain cheese for Jo, everyone was feeling pretty good. Jo was on her second gin and tonic, Tuck was enjoying a $7 bottle of gas station blackberry wine in his favorite mug, and the other three had just been shooting whiskey. They made short work of the pizza and when everyone's plates were empty, Charlie turned to Eden with an expectant look on her face.

"Now?" she asked her girlfriend, bouncing up and down on the sofa cushion. "Can we do it now?"

Eden nodded enthusiastically in response and Charlie ran off up the stairs.

"What's happening?" Jo asked.

"Well," Eden began, her eyes sparkling, "for Christmas, Charlie and I went in on a present for each other."

"You gave yourselves a joint present to yourselves?" Tuck laughed.

"Yes, we did." Eden stated, then added, "I'm still not sure where to send the thank-you card."

Jo rolled her eyes at that.

"I should probably go help her, actually. There's a lot of parts to it." Eden headed toward the stairs, too.

"I figured you'd just promised her that you'd finally try anal," Jo commented.

"How did you know about that?" Eden asked curiously, stopping with her hand on the banister.

"We share a wall," Jo shrugged.

"Ah," Eden nodded. "So we do. Alas, we're still in the negotiation phase of that particular venture."

"What is there to negotiate?" Tuck asked.

"More than you would think," Eden said honestly. "I'm very detail oriented. I think Charlie was going to talk to you about it actually."

"You're our resident expert on anal!" Charlie shouted from the top of the stairs.

"Fair enough," Tuck shrugged and sipped his wine.

"Please tell me how that conversation goes," Emily laughed, leaning her head onto Tuck's shoulder.

He nodded at her, "Oh, I will."

"I mean, for instance," Charlie said, struggling through the doorway with a speaker and various black cords in her arms. "Do you think 9 inches is too big?"

"YES!" Tuck, Jo, and Emily chorused together, their faces aghast.

"See? I told you!" Charlie shouted in the general vicinity of the ceiling.

"Mind over matter!" came Eden's reply.

"Which one of you is going to be receiving?" Tuck questioned, looking confused.

"That's part of the further negotiations," Charlie informed him, beginning to set things up.

"You bought a karaoke machine, didn't you?" Jo laughed.

"Yeah, we did!" Charlie replied with exuberance. "It's got 4 microphones and two speakers and you can just use it with a laptop or whatever, with Youtube!"

"Wow," Jo said in an amused tone as Eden walked in the door with another speaker and small mixing board. "How much did this all cost?"

"Only like $300," Eden chimed in. "A real bargain! For hours of family fun!"

"You have to promise to sing some songs that aren't show tunes, Edie," Emily told her, foreseeing how the evening might turn into something that more closely resembled a Broadway review than a bunch of drunk college kids singing karaoke.

"I will make no such promises!" Eden declared. "And how dare you even suggest such a thing!"

Eden and Charlie worked together to set all the equipment up and soon they were all taking turns singing and laughing uproariously at one another.

Two hours later, as Charlie tried to convince Jo to duet Summer Nights with her and Eden finished her second song from _Les Miserables_ , Emily felt her mind surfacing a bit from the haze of alcohol she had sunk into earlier in the night.

Tuck seemed to sense this, and asked, "You want me to see if we have any more of that marshmallow vodka?"

Emily considered it but shook her head, declining. "Nah, I'm alright." For the first time all week, sobering up seemed like it might be more pleasurable than being drunk.


End file.
